I found this via rydra_wong's links. As a current professor of Old English, I was very interested to see what you did with the word.
I don't know what Teresa Hayden thinks the word means. I don't know if Tolkien used it, or Lovecraft. You are mistaken about the Old English, however.
In Old English, "niðing" or "niþing" means "a villain, one who commits a vile action" (Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary). I looked it up in the Old English Corpus, and these are the only results (the Corpus contains almost all extant Old English):
LawWal B14.37 [Roughly: Law about Plundering the Slain] 1. [0001 (1)] Walreaf is niðinges dæde: gif hwa ofsacen wille, do þæt mid eahta & feowertig fulborenra þegena. [My trans: "Robbing the slain [see Bosworth-Toller again] is a villain's deed: if one wants to exculpate oneself, one does that with 48 full-born thegns" as oath-supporters--taking "þegena" for "begena," as Bosworth-Toller does.]
ChronC (O'Brien O'Keeffe) B17.7 [The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS C] 1. [078310] & se cing þa & eall here cwædon Swegen for niðing; VIII scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn amyrðrode, syððan hine forleton ealle butan II, & he gewende þa to Bricge & þar wunode mid Baldwine. ["And the king then and all the army called Swegen a villain:He had eight ships before he murdered Beorn; afterwards they all left him except two, and he went then to Bridge(?) and lived there with Baldwine."]
The Oxford English Dictionary says: " 1. A coward, a villain; a person who breaks the law or a code of honour; an outlaw."
The word is never used of Grendel. It comes from the root "nið," meaning "hatred" or "enmity." I am in no way defending Teresa Hayden; I think what she said is quite bad enough, and what I've seen of the exchange hardly merits calling the respondents to her husband "villians" or putting them in the same category as those who plunder the dead or murderers! However, the word is not Old English for subhuman or sexually deviant; it's not associated with cannibals there either.
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Date: 2009-01-31 05:34 pm (UTC)I don't know what Teresa Hayden thinks the word means. I don't know if Tolkien used it, or Lovecraft. You are mistaken about the Old English, however.
In Old English, "niðing" or "niþing" means "a villain, one who commits a vile action" (Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary). I looked it up in the Old English Corpus, and these are the only results (the Corpus contains almost all extant Old English):
LawWal B14.37 [Roughly: Law about Plundering the Slain]
1. [0001 (1)] Walreaf is niðinges dæde: gif hwa ofsacen wille, do þæt mid eahta & feowertig fulborenra þegena.
[My trans: "Robbing the slain [see Bosworth-Toller again] is a villain's deed: if one wants to exculpate oneself, one does that with 48 full-born thegns" as oath-supporters--taking "þegena" for "begena," as Bosworth-Toller does.]
ChronC (O'Brien O'Keeffe) B17.7 [The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS C]
1. [078310] & se cing þa & eall here cwædon Swegen for niðing; VIII scypa he hæfde ær he Beorn amyrðrode, syððan hine forleton ealle butan II, & he gewende þa to Bricge & þar wunode mid Baldwine.
["And the king then and all the army called Swegen a villain:He had eight ships before he murdered Beorn; afterwards they all left him except two, and he went then to Bridge(?) and lived there with Baldwine."]
The Oxford English Dictionary says: " 1. A coward, a villain; a person who breaks the law or a code of honour; an outlaw."
The word is never used of Grendel. It comes from the root "nið," meaning "hatred" or "enmity." I am in no way defending Teresa Hayden; I think what she said is quite bad enough, and what I've seen of the exchange hardly merits calling the respondents to her husband "villians" or putting them in the same category as those who plunder the dead or murderers! However, the word is not Old English for subhuman or sexually deviant; it's not associated with cannibals there either.