More Noun Classes

Old English Grammar 1

Chapter 4 · More Noun Classes

🗂️ More Noun Classes

Chapters 2 and 3 covered the biggest classes: a-stems, ō-stems and n-stems. This chapter surveys the rest. You do not need to memorise every table; the aim is to recognise which class a noun belongs to and to see where Modern English plurals like men and feet come from. All forms are from the Noun classes section of Wikipedia's Old English grammar article unless marked as mine.

i-stems

All genders are possible, but neuter i-stems are rare. The article's models are tīd "time" (a feminine heavy i-stem) and Engle "the English". It also gives lēode "people" and Dene "the Danes" as nouns that exist only in the plural.

The article says the plural nominative-accusative -e of Engle and Dene is kept from regular sound change.

u-stems

Masculine or feminine, with one declension for both. Models: sunu "son" (light) and hand "hand" (heavy). Other examples: duru "door", medu "mead", wudu "wood".

The article's genitive and dative rows for the u-stems did not clearly separate singular from plural in what I read (the forms printed are suna, sunum, handa, handum), so I do not assign them to columns. Most historical u-stems moved into the a-stems, and some a-stem nouns keep leftover u-stem forms: feld has the dative singular felda, ford has forda, winter has wintra, and æppel has the nominative/accusative plural æppla.

Root nouns: where men and feet come from

Models: mann "person", hnutu "nut" and gōs "goose"; the article also lists bōc "book", cū "cow", gāt "goat", āc "oak", burg "city" and sulh "plow". They are masculine or feminine; all masculine root nouns are heavy, and feminine ones are light (ending in -e with umlaut) or heavy (no ending).

• i-umlaut: root nouns change their vowel in the dative singular and the nominative/accusative plural (the highlighted vowels). The article links this to Modern English plurals formed by vowel change: man/men, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, mouse/mice, goose/geese, louse/lice.
• Which Old English words? Only mann and gōs of those English pairs are in the article's table. The article mentions foot, mouse and tooth only as Modern English comparisons, so the Old English forms fōt, mūs, tōþ are not given in the text I read.

nd-stems

The agent suffix -end forms nouns from verbs. The article's one-syllable models are frēond "friend" and fēond "enemy, fiend", all masculine, declined like masculine root nouns; the multi-syllable model is ymbstandend "bystander".

The article notes that the multi-syllable plurals keep adjectival endings, a relic of their origin as present participles. The table layout was scrambled in what I read, so I rebuilt these forms from the printed endings; check the frēond forms against the article.

r-stems: family words

Five nouns: fæder "father", mōdor "mother", brōþor, sweostor and dohtor. The article glosses only fæder and mōdor in this section; I add "brother", "sister" and "daughter" for the other three from my own background knowledge.

• brōþor, mōdor and dohtor have i-umlaut in the dative singular; sweostor does not. fæder is indeclinable in the singular and takes its plural from the a-stems.
• brōþor and sweostor often take the prefix ġe- in the plural.
• The article does not link brethren to brōþor.

z-stems

Neuter nouns: ċild "child", ǣġ "egg", lamb "lamb", ċealf "calf". They inflect like light neuter a-stems, but their plural endings begin in -r-.

Irregularities worth knowing

The article lists variations inside the classes. These are the ones most useful at this stage (examples are the article's):

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