scop

Learned borrowing from Old English sċop.

• IPA^(key): /ʃɒp/, /ʃoʊp/, /skɒp/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒp, -oʊp

scop (plural scops)

1. (historical) A poet or minstrel in Anglo-Saxon England.
   • 1900, Reuben Post Halleck, History of English Literature, quoted in 1927, Thomas Tapper, Percy Goetschius, Essentials in Music History, 2011, Facsimile Edition, page 42,

     The kings and nobles often attached to them a scop, or maker of verses. […] The banquet was not complete without the songs of the scop. While the warriors ate the flesh of boar and deer and warmed their blood with horns of foaming ale, the scop, standing where the blaze from a pile of logs disclosed to him the grizzly features of the men, sang his most stirring songs, often accompanying them with the music of a rude harp.

   • 1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 20:

     Jealous and full of anger, they leered as the soft song of the scop praised the All-Powerful.

   • 1991, R. N. Sarkar, A Topical Survey of English Literature, India, page 1:

     The poem is, therefore, entitled Widsith which means a great traveller. The scop was moving from place to place to find a Lord in his desolate mind here. […] The Lament of Deor tells a different story. It is the story of sorrow, clearly defined, the sorrow of a similar scop who may have been thrown out of favour and led into an eager search of a new master.

   • 2004, Richard Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader, page 273:

     During the feast held in Heorot to celebrate Beowulf's mortal wounding of Grendel, the poet has King Hrothgar's scop perform a 'lay' whose theme of death and disaster is clearly meant to act as a sort of balance to the unbridled joy of the hall-people.

   • 2011, Hugh Magennis, The Cambridge Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature, Cambridge University Press, page 43:

     The beginning of the poem introduces a speech by Widsith (lines 1—4a), with an accompanying account of his life and travels as a scop: […] .

• scops owl

• COPs, COSP, CPOs, PCOS, PCSO, POCs, PoCs, cops

• sċeop

From Proto-West Germanic *skop, from Proto-Germanic *skupą. Cognate with Old High German skopf (“poet”), Old Norse skop (“mocking”).

• IPA^(key): /ʃop/

sċop m

1. poet

Strong a-stem:

• lēoþwyrhta

• ealusċop (“one who performs poetry where there is drinking”)
• sċopġereord (“poetic language”)
• sċoplīċ (“poetic”)
• sealmsċop (“psalmist”)

• → English: scop (learned)

• lēoþ (“poem”)
• lēoþcræft (“poetry”)
• lēoþlīċ (“poetic”)

Borrowed from Greek σκοπός (skopós).

scop n (plural scopuri)

1. purpose

• “scop”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2025