Feoh

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. In Old English, a term denoting movable wealth or property, particularly livestock; also representing the concept of cattle as a form of currency; used symbolically in runic alphabets to signify wealth or prosperity
2. An archaic word referring to personal possessions especially animals like cattle used as a medium of exchange; a representation of material riches; employed in early Germanic runes indicating financial gain
3. A historic term indicating tangible assets, chiefly livestock regarded as wealth; an early measure of economic value; a character in ancient scripts symbolizing fortune and wealth accumulation

Etymology: Old English "feoh" meant movable wealth, above all livestock, and it shows how early Germanic peoples measured riches. Its closest modern descendant is "fee", which survives in English only in legal and financial senses. The same root gave us German "Vieh", meaning cattle, a sign that the word once centred on herds rather than coins. The sound change behind "feoh" is the surprising part. Its Proto-Germanic ancestor was "*fehu", and the word shares that origin with Latin "pecus", meaning cattle, and "pecunia", meaning money. Latin's link between livestock and cash is the same idea Old English expressed with "feoh", so the two languages arrived at matching meanings from the same root. The rune named after this word, fehu, is the first letter of the Elder Futhark, and it stood for wealth and prosperity. Its name carried the older sense of cattle as currency into the runic alphabet, where it became a symbol of abundance.

Synonyms: fehu, wealth, cattle