Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The chief magistrate of a district in Anglo-Saxon England.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A chief; a leader: the Anglo-Saxon original of alderman, used in modern historical works with reference to its Anglo-Saxon use.
Wiktionary
- n. the chief magistrate of a shire in Anglo-Saxon England
Etymologies
- Old English; see alderman. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“You are the man I need as what you would call the ealdorman there.”
“It was he who was so good to the monks, helping to defend them against the "ealdorman" of the Mercians, and others who were turning them out: he also helped to found the Abbey of Ely.”
Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days
“We have in the "Battle of Maldon" a great patriotic poem, written about the "ealdorman" [H] of the East Angles, Byrthnoth, or Brihtnoth, who stood so valiantly against the Danes.”
Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days
“I am an ealdorman, though I call myself Earl Uhtred, which is the same thing, and the fading parchments are proof of what I own.”
“However, there are occasional mentions in Bede that suggest a king needed the support of his powerful nobles King Oswin comes to mind, and in the late 9th century Alfred was always finding that some important ealdorman or other had gone over to the Danes.”
“The battle was a crushing defeat for the men of Essex and their ealdorman Byrhtnoth, at the hands of a Viking raiding party on the marshes of the Essex coast.”
“Aethelred accepted the overlordship of Alfred and demoted himself from cyning (king) to ealdorman ( earl), but in return had the security of connection to the Wessex royal family.”
“Shire and hundred courts administered local custom with the free-man suitors under the king's representative-ealdorman, shire-reeve, or hundred-reeve.”
“IN THIS year Cynewulf and the councillors of the West Saxons deprived Sigeberht of his kingdom because of his unjust acts, except for Hampshire; and he retained that until he killed the ealdorman who stood by him longest; and then Cynewulf drove him into the Weald, and he lived there until a swineherd stabbed him to death by the stream at Privett, and he was avenging Ealdorman Cumbra.”
“I, Oslac, ealdorman of the South Saxons, willingly grant for the relief of my soul to the venerable church of St. Paul the Apostle a certain portion, i.e. with two names, Earnley and Tielœsora, with all things belonging to it, fields, woods.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ealdorman’.
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There oughta be a law
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
Tweets
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chained_bear "The chief magnate of Mercia as an English province held the title of ealdorman until 1017, and earl thereafter." (Found on Wikipedia while looking up something else entirely.) Aug 26, 2008