On nominal compounds hlaford, ealdhlaford and ealdhlafordcynn in Old English

On nominal compounds hlaford, ealdhlaford and ealdhlafordcynn in Old EnglishThe paper analyses some aspects of nominal compounding in Old English on the example of three lexemes: hlaford, ealdhlaford, and ealdhlafordcynn.The compounds were consequently formed according to the models: N + N (hlaford) > Adj + N (ealdhlaford) > N + N (ealdhlafordcynn).Being the oldest of the three, hlaford consists of hlaf 'bread' and weard 'ward'.Out of its 1400 occurrences in Old English there is one retaining the original form hlafweard.The semantics of hlaford according to the Toronto Dictionary of Old English includes male head of a household, master, husband, ruler, sovereign, lord, God, and surprisingly also Satan as head of the hell, or lord of devils.The compound ealdhlaford amounts to 6 occurrences only, mostly found in the Alfredian texts in connection with ancient history.Despite its narrow distribution, the compound ealdhlaford enters a new compound as a separate part, and that isealdhlafordcynn, hapax legomenon from the prose version of the Old English Boethius.Interestingly, this single example is in the Genitive form, which means that the lexeme is understood as full-fledged and may have been used in other non-preserved texts.