Stithy

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈstɪði/

Definitions

1. A blacksmith's workshop or forge where metal is heated and shaped into tools and other objects
2. A place dedicated to the craft of shaping and heating metals, typically utilized by blacksmiths for creating tools and other metal objects
3. A workshop where a blacksmith fabricates metal items through heating and shaping processes is referred to as such

Etymology: "Stithy" is a word for an anvil, or for the smithy where anvils are worked, and it arrived in English from Old Norse "steði," meaning an anvil. Its older cousins in the Norse languages still carry that plain sense of the iron block itself, and the English word kept that core while the sense gradually widened outward from the anvil to the workshop built around it. The English form entered through Middle English "stithy," which points to a northern route into the language, as Old Norse speakers settled and mixed with English speakers in the north and east of England. The word is one of the many Norse contributions to everyday English vocabulary, sitting alongside words for craft and labour that the Vikings and their descendants brought with them.

Synonyms: forge, smithy