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tíðindi

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Etymology and origin of the Old Norse word tíðindi

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1200–1225 AM 619 4to More words from the 12th century
Ultimate origin
Old Norse tíðr
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Old Norse tíðindi
English tidings

Forms

tíðindi n pl[1] Also written tíðendi, the head in Fritzner, Baetke and Hægstad–Torp;[2][3] the oldest Norwegian manuscript has tiðende and tiðendum.[4]

Etymology

It is formed from Old Norse tíðr (“happening, current”) + -endi, a plural noun made to the adjective.[5][6] Falk and Torp read the base as “what happens, what is in use, usual, frequent”.[7] The adjective belongs with the noun tíð (“time”), from Proto-Germanic *tīdiz (“time”), and Kroonen sets the two side by side.[8]

Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon, like de Vries, reconstructs the suffix with an initial w,[6][5] and tentatively connects it with the verb venda (“to turn”), so that the word would first have meant “what turns towards, what concerns one”.[6]

West Germanic formed the same meaning differently, on the verb: Old English tīdung, Middle Low German tidinge and Middle High German zitunge, the source of German Zeitung.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Menota's oldest manuscript with the word is the Norwegian AM 619 4to of 1200–1225, which has tiðende and tiðendum.[4] ONP quotes a passage of it, under flytja and dated 1212, where the word means news: Ec fagnaða þæim tiðendum er mer ero sogð. at vér monum fara ok flytiasc til guðs hus “I rejoiced at the tidings told to me, that we shall go and move to God's house”.[9] IcePaHC dates the Icelandic Homily Book, where the word is also found, to 1150.[10][11]

Semantic evolution

The word has two senses that run side by side from the start: what has happened, an event, and the report of it, news.[12][3] The first sense lives in set phrases: gerask til tíðinda and verða til tíðinda “to happen”, and er þetta var tíðinda “when this happened”;[12][2] þú skalt eigi kunna frá tíðindum at segja “you won't live to tell the tale” is a saga threat.[12][13] The Edda uses it in the prose and in Þrymskviða, where Thor asks for lǫng tíðindi, the full news.[14][15]

It lives on as Icelandic tíðindi, Faroese tíðindi, Norwegian Nynorsk tidend, Swedish tidende and Danish tidende.[5][6] In Danish and Norwegian tidende became a word for a newspaper, the sense that West Germanic gave to German Zeitung.[7] de Vries lists Middle English tiþinde and tythande as loans from it, after Björkman.[5] Etymonline traces the English word tidings to late Old English tīdung, and in part to this Old Norse word.[16]

Timeline

  • 1150 – tíðindi in the Icelandic Homily Book, by IcePaHC's dating of the text.[10]
  • 1200–1225 – tiðende in the Norwegian manuscript AM 619 4to.[4]
  • 1212 – tiðendum “tidings” in ONP's quotation from the Norwegian homily book.[9]
  • 1260 – tíðenda in Jómsvíkinga saga, by IcePaHC's dating.[10]
  • 1320–1350 – tíðendi throughout the sagas of the Icelandic codex AM 132 fol.[17]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (plural only) tidings, news, a report of what has happened.[12][13]
  2. (plural only) events, happenings, something noteworthy that takes place.[12][3][18]

Word family

  • tíðindalauss
  • tíðindasǫgn
  • tíðindasaga

Descendants

  • Icelandic tíðindi[1]
  • Faroese tíðindi[1]
  • Norwegian Nynorsk tidend[1]
  • Old Swedish tiþandi[1]
  • Swedish tidende[1]
  • Old Danish tidinde[1]
  • Danish tidende[1]
  • tíðr
  • tíð

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. tíðendi
  3. ^ a b c Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 650
  4. ^ a b c Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 619 4to
  5. ^ a b c d de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 587
  6. ^ a b c d Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. tíðindi
  7. ^ a b c Falk, Hjalmar; Torp, Alf (1910–1911), Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, p. s.v. tidende
  8. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 516
  9. ^ a b Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. flytja
  10. ^ a b c Wallenberg, Joel C.; Ingason, Anton Karl; Sigurðsson, Einar Freyr; Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur, Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus, version 0.9
  11. ^ Larsson, Ludvig (1891), Ordförrådet i de älsta islänska handskrifterna, Lund: Ph. Lindstedt, p. 332
  12. ^ a b c d e Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. tíðindi
  13. ^ a b Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 633
  14. ^ Gering, Hugo (1903), Vollständiges Wörterbuch zu den Liedern der Edda, Halle: Waisenhaus, p. col. 1041
  15. ^ Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 568
  16. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  17. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 132 fol
  18. ^ Faulkes, Anthony (2011), A New Introduction to Old Norse III: Glossary and Index of Names, 4th ed., London: Viking Society for Northern Research, p. s.v. tíðindi
Cite this entry

“Tíðindi.” Etymologically, 13 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/non/t%C3%AD%C3%B0indi. Accessed 13 Nov. 2026.

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