Eard

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An old word for a person's native land or home region ; to live in a place and make it one's abode
2. A homeland or region where people have long lived ; to reside or make one's home somewhere in an archaic sense
3. The country or district a person belongs to by birth ; to dwell, abide or make a habitation in a particular spot

Etymology: In Old English, "eard" meant a dwelling-place, home, or native land, the place where a person lived and belonged. It is not a variant of "earth," even though the two look alike. Poets used it often, and it appears in compounds such as "eardstapa," literally "dwelling-stepper," a term for a homeless wanderer driven from his home, a figure who appears in several Old English poems. Because "eard" was a native Germanic word rather than a loan from Latin or French, it has no Norman-era story to tell. Its meaning narrowed toward the idea of home and homeland, and it gradually dropped out of everyday speech during the Middle English period. Its best-known legacy is in the poetry that preserved it, where the wanderer's loss of his "eard" is the central tragedy.