Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An ancient Irish dwelling or fort built on an artificial island in a lake or marsh.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An ancient lake-dwelling in Ireland. Such dwellings were sometimes built entirely of stone or wood, but more usually of a combination of stones and piles. Some, however, were made of basketwork and sod, and some stood on platforms like the Swiss lake-dwellings. They were invariably roundish or irregularly oval in form, and were built in lakes and morasses. In these crannogs are found articles of various kinds, from the rudest flint implements to highly finished ornaments of gold. Also
crannoge .
Wiktionary
- n. An artificial island, used in prehistoric and medieval times in Scotland and Ireland for dwelling.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One of the stockaded islands in Scotland and Ireland which in ancient times were numerous in the lakes of both countries. They may be regarded as the very latest class of prehistoric strongholds, reaching their greatest development in early historic times, and surviving through the Middle Ages. See also Lake dwellings, under lake.
Etymologies
- From Old Irish crannóc. (Wiktionary)
- Irish Gaelic crannóg, wooden structure, pole, from Middle Irish crannóc, from Old Irish, from crann, tree. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“His gaze was still shifting nervously about the crannog, and she could see a glitter of perspiration on his brow.”
“And one for the house of Christian holy women where Cerdic was now, to the east of the crannog.”
“It was a crannog: a grouping of round, reed-thatched huts raised on oak piles above the swampy ground and connected by a network of swaying rope-and-wood causeways.”
“The only light in the small room was from the flare of the torches set around the crannog outside.”
“There was a lot of textile stuff in both the exhibition and in the reconstructed crannog....fibres and yarns from plants like nettles as well as sheep wool, natural dyeing, several reconstructions of stone weighted looms and of course stone whorl spindles.”
“It`s a reconstruction of a Loch Tay crannog dating from 600BC.”
“Meanwhile, archaeologists excavating a Welsh crannog, or bog dwelling built on stilts, may have found evidence of a royal fondness for the corgi dog that predates Queen Elizabeth II's by more than a millennium.”
“The island in the lake was probably a crannog, or artificial fortified island, such as are common on the lakes of Ireland.”
“It is not shown that any men ever lived on the tops of cairns, and, even if they did so in modern times (1556-1758) they could not leave abundant relics of the broch and crannog age (said to be of 400-1100 A.D.), and leave no relics of modern date.”
“As people certainly did live on these structures of Langbank and Dunbuie during the broch and crannog age (centuries 5-12) it really matters not to our purpose _why_ they did so, or _how_ they did so.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘crannog’.
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words
words
good boy, atta boy, knee low, make a mountain o..., generalises, bard, slicker, laser focus group..., kilolex, viscosity, rotunda, fascinator and 10 more...
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A Second Helping of Random Palavery
A continuation of my first list, "A Serving of Random Palavery". Like the first, this list contains words that catch my attention, ring happily in my ears, are fun to speak, or are interesting to ...
bouffoir, mossberry, webisode, barquette, brochidodromous, festooned brochid..., eucamptodromy, eucamptodromous, loment, keenings, moss-trooper, mosstrooping and 138 more...
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Under The Kilt
Anything related to Scottish culture, cuisine, language, history and so on. Does not include Gaelic words unless acceptable (roughly speaking!) in a wider sense.
brae, machair, loch, burn, inverness, shieling, camanachd, shinty, diddy, bhoy, ghillie, brownie and 393 more...
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Castles and Keeps
Shamelessly ripped off from this site and others (to be named hereinafter). (Fair warning: for my own edification, I may add definitions/comments from the site, but you might want to just go there ...
abutment, adulterine, allure, angle-spur, apse, arbalest, arbalestier, arbalist, arcade, arch, armoury, arrow slit and 410 more...
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Rogue's Words for bonnie lads n lassies
tinchel, glen, sassenach, guddle, brae, bonnie, eejit, deerhound, hoonds, lassie, laddie, heiland and 188 more...
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Interesting/mellifluous/delicious
insouciant, expiate, apotheosis, insidious, teacup, homunculus, porcine, perestroika, milquetoast, unputdownable, paroxysm, agitprop and 65 more...
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out forms
Sir Francis Bacon: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
chinoiserie, rhyparography, Ludibrium, Tarasque, Trabant, joropo, blocage, crannog, whitsour, zampogna, scamillus, Kacapi and 77 more...
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medieval
ghosts
ancestors
unnameable, unknowable, unfathomable
the feeling of reading Joseph Conrad or H. P. Lovecraft
or walking through Kunark in EverQuest
or looking at medi...horror, gloom, melancholia, malebolgia, leviathan, dwelling, dread, cthulu, azazel, bog, skein, pilfer and 32 more...
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Medieval Fantasy
Any words useful for fantastical (or historical, I suppose) medieval settings.
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jey's Words
clerestory, outwith, sublunary, machair, luskentyre, antisyzygy, narthex, halyard, anegada, hebrides, schiehallion, quiraing and 53 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for crannog.
bilby The one pictured in my link was used as a kind of sentry post, roughly speaking. Jan 11, 2009
hernesheir Also a man-made island in a shallow water-scape built to provide safety and partial or delayed inaccessibility? Jan 11, 2009
bilby A slightly different meaning is explained here. Jan 11, 2009
bilby Scots - loch dwelling built over the water on piles with a walkway onto the land. Aug 2, 2008