Bessinger J.B. A Short Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, in a Normalized Early West-Saxon Orthography

University of Toronto Press, 1961. — 105 p.This Dictionary is based primarily on the text of The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (edd. George P. Krapp and Elliott V. K. Dobbie, New York, 1931-1953), with additional references adjusted to other modern editions of individual poems. It is a gloss to the crucial 40 per cent of the poetic vocabulary—some 3000 parent words, mostly simplex forms, that are the basic units of a markedly synthetic diction. The remainder, largely unglossed in this dictionary, is built according to transparent principles upon the compounding of parent words, and the resulting compounds are with some exceptions self-explanatory. The exceptional compounds of special meaning are glossed in this book along with parent words. Cross-references are given to the forms of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs which are most commonly troublesome to the student. In all, the dictionary contains about 5000 entries, many of which include additional compounded forms. Excluded from it are most unassimilated Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words, most proper names, and inflected forms of the definite article and the pronouns, except when these form homographs with other glossed words.