Dictionary

sail-road en · NOUN

Etymology

Calque of Old English seglrād, a kenning formed from segl (“sail”) + rād (“road”).

Meanings

1. (literary, qualifier:kenning, rare) The ocean; the open sea.
   • [N]or for all their skill might those dwellers in the earth see the sail-road, how this greatest of tents was tied, when he honoured with glory that people loyal to their Lord. 2013, Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland, Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 218:
   • There were writhing sea-dragosn and monsters slouching on slopes by the cliff, serpents and wild things such as those that often surface at dawn to roam the sail-road and doom the voyage. 1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 47:
   • Never before had she sailed into the open sea, and out of sight of land; never had she taken the sail road. 2013, Stephen Baxter, Alternate Histories, London: Gollanz:

Forms