Gleoman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A travelling entertainer in early English society who sang, recited poems and played a harp for audiences
2. In Anglo-Saxon times, a professional performer who recited heroic poetry and music at feasts and courts
3. A medieval Old English minstrel, a wandering singer and storyteller who entertained lords and their households

Etymology: Old English "gleoman" was a word for a minstrel or entertainer, the kind of performer who sang, recited and played to a hall full of listeners. It is the ancestor of the modern "gleeman," and the root is "gleo," meaning mirth, music or entertainment, a word that also gave us "glee." Its older Germanic roots are sometimes linked to a notion of loud or bright sound, but that connection is uncertain and not something to rely on. The most striking thing about the word is how completely it vanished from ordinary English. Gleemen were the poets and jesters of Anglo-Saxon and early medieval halls, and their trade is documented in Old English texts, but the word dropped out of use centuries ago. Only the wider family survives, in "glee" itself, which shifted from a general sense of music and merriment to the lighter joy we use today.