Hapax Legomena in the Old English Exodus: An Etymological Study

This essay serves as an attempt to examine various hapax legomena in the Old English poem Exodus from an etymological perspective in order to more conclusively determine its date of composition. Exodus is somewhat unique among Old English epic poems in its proportion ofhapax legeomena, having over 150 examples in under 600 surviving lines. Its date of composition is ofparticular scholarly interest due to its disputed relationship with the more famous epic Beowulf(which includesan identical long-line). This essay explores those hapax legomena in the work whose etymologies are the most heated sources of debate in Anglo-Saxon scholarship: namely, seven ofthe eight monomorphemic, or at least non-compound, hapaxes as well as one particularly controversial compound. Findings are rather inconclusive, due to the relative dearth of linguistic data on the subject, but a lack of strong data supporting any evidence of borrowings from Old Norse does not rule out the possibility of an early date of composition. This, coupled with a few other findings, means that one might tentatively speculate that such a possibility is not only plausible, but may in fact probable.