thingman
See also: Thingman
English
editEtymology
editCalque of Old Norse thingman, which is þing (“thing”) + maðr (“man”), or else a back-formation from "thingmen", which was borrowed morpheme for morpheme from þingmenn (“thingmen”).
Noun
editthingman (plural thingmen)
- (historical, usually in the plural) One of several men gathered at a thing, for example to settle a dispute over a debt.
- 2008, The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law, translated from Old Norwegian by Laurence Marcellus Larson, page 63
- Now if the debtor pleads that "I do not know the law but I will comply with whatever the thingmen think lawful," he [the creditor] must summon him before the thing after five nights, at the shortest, and five times five at the longest, if he knows when the thing is to meet; […] it is then the duty of the thingmen to decide the matter and to award him his money.
- 2008, The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law, translated from Old Norwegian by Laurence Marcellus Larson, page 63
- (historical, usually in the plural) (One of several) men serving as the army, particularly the mercenary army, (of a specific ruler).
- 1989, Law and literature in medieval Iceland: Ljósvetninga saga and Valla-Ljóts saga, Theodore Murdock Andersson, William Ian Miller, page 8:
- A thingman and chieftain owed each other duties of support. […] The ideal is well stated by Eyjolf to his own thingmen as he requests their support in his struggles against the Ljosvetning kin group […]