See whale-road on Wiktionary
{
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"etymology_text": "From whale + road, after Old English hranrād, from hran (“whale”) + rād (“road”), though this translation is debated. Another translation is hran as dolphin and rād as a modified form of rāden (to ride). Therefore, hranrād would be the \"riding place of dolphins\" or \"dolphins' riding\".",
"forms": [
{
"form": "the whale-road",
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"ref": "1907, John Gibb, “Beowulf”, in The Children's Hour, volume 4, page 3:",
"text": "[…] and his name was called Scyld. He grew to man's estate, and became a mighty king, and subdued the peoples under him. All the neighboring peoples across the whale roads obeyed Scyld.",
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"ref": "1999, Seamus Heaney, transl., Beowulf:",
"text": "In the end each clan on the outlying coasts / beyond the whale-road had to yield to him / and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.",
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],
"glosses": [
"The ocean; the open sea."
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"word": "whale-road"
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"etymology_text": "From whale + road, after Old English hranrād, from hran (“whale”) + rād (“road”), though this translation is debated. Another translation is hran as dolphin and rād as a modified form of rāden (to ride). Therefore, hranrād would be the \"riding place of dolphins\" or \"dolphins' riding\".",
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"ref": "1907, John Gibb, “Beowulf”, in The Children's Hour, volume 4, page 3:",
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Download raw JSONL data for whale-road meaning in All languages combined (2.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-02 using wiktextract (6fdc867 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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