was trying to look up a reference for "jewel in my dower" which i am sure i saw somewhere recently. i remember thinking at that time, oho, so shakespeare's usage might have an origin in this formulaic expression, but what it is now i cannot recall, nor where i saw it, nor in what language although i suspect it was old english or latin i haven't had much truck with other languages lately. but because i was browsing through peter baker, here is your old english vocab word for the day:

beadoleoma: battle-light. i.e., the sword, a sword being that which gleams and catches the light in battle.

there is also banhus, bone-house, which is the body. also in same vein: bancofa, bone-coffer, and banfaet, bone-container.

word-hord, word-hoard, is one i really like. i would have guessed it was a lexicon or dictionary, probably because of stephen barney's lexicon of 100 most common OE words which is precisely called wordhoard, but what it really is is your capacity for speech. isn't that nice? your capacity for language is the potential of all the words stored in yourself. there are poems waiting in that definition.

i should probably put up one new word a day. hmm.