Brauð

Meaning of Old Norse word "brauð"

As defined by the Cleasby & Vigfusson Old Norse to English dictionary:

Old Norse word brauð can mean:brauð

brauð

n. [A. S. bread; Engl. bread; Germ. brod; Dan. bröd]. This word, which at present has become a household word in all branches of the Teutonic, was in early times unknown in its present sense: Ulf. constantly renders αρτος as well as ψωμίον by hlaibs; Engl. loaf; A. S. hlâf; the old A. S. poetry also has hlâf, and the old heathen Scandin. poems only hleifr, Hm. 40, 51, Rm. 4, 28. In Engl. also, the words lord, lady,—A. S. hlâford, hlâfdige, which properly mean loaf-warder, loaf-maid,—bear out the remark, that in the heathen age when those words were formed, breâd, in the sense of panis, was not in use in England; in old A. S. the word is only used in the compd beobreâd of the honeycomb (Gr. κηρίον), cp. Engl. bee-bread; O. H. G. bibrod; Germ. bienenbrod; and this seems to be the original sense of the word. The passage in which doubtless the Goths used ‘braud,’ Luke xxiv. 42—the only passage of the n. T. where κηρίον occurs—is lost in Ulf. Down to the 9th century this word had not its present sense in any Teut. dialect, but was, as it seems, in all of them used of the honeycomb only. The Icel. calls thyme ‘bráð-björg’ or ‘broð-björg’ (sweet food?); cp. the Lat. ‘redolentque thymo fragrantia mella;’ the root of ‘brauð’ is perhaps akin to the Lat. ‘fragrare.’ The transition from the sense of honeycomb to that of bread is obscure: in present usage the ‘bread’ denotes the substance, ‘loaf’ the shape; b. ok smjör, Eg. 204; b. ok kál, Mar.; heilagt b., Hom. 137; the Icel. n. T. (freq.)

brauð

2. food, hence metaph. living, esp. a parsonage, (mod.) The cures in Icel. are divided into þinga-brauð and beneficia.

Possible runic inscription in Younger Futhark:ᛒᚱᛅᚢᚦ
Younger Futhark runes were used from 8th to 12th centuries in Scandinavia and their overseas settlements