Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rune   Listen
noun
Rune  n.  
1.
A letter, or character, belonging to the written language of the ancient Norsemen, or Scandinavians; in a wider sense, applied to the letters of the ancient nations of Northern Europe in general. Note: The Norsemen had a peculiar alphabet, consisting of sixteen letters, or characters, called runes, the origin of which is lost in the remotest antiquity. The signification of the word rune (mystery) seems to allude to the fact that originally only a few were acquainted with the use of these marks, and that they were mostly applied to secret tricks, witchcrafts and enchantments. But the runes were also used in communication by writing.
2.
pl. Old Norse poetry expressed in runes. "Runes were upon his tongue, As on the warrior's sword."
Rune stone, a stone bearing a runic inscription.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Rune" Quotes from Famous Books



... birds, The lowing of cattle Must blend with the words. Without these, indeed, you Would find it ere long, As though I should read you The words of a song That lamely would linger When lacking the rune, The voice of the singer, The ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... set forth in the Edda that Cold may be overcome by a magic spell. Thus Groa (Grougaldr, 12) promises her son a rune to effect this:— ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... Cap'n Butts! Gen'le gen'lemen! would ye rune a pore widdy woman by a singing of sech filthy tunes? And me up for my license again ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... training- school of old Fraser! but enough of the old tyrant and his slaves. Belle, prepare tea this moment, or dread my anger. I have not a gold-headed cane like old Fraser of Lovat, but I have, what some people would dread much more, an Armenian rune-stick." ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... eyes to lofty rhymes Of things with things, of times with times, Primal chimes of sun and shade, Of sound and echo, man and maid; The land reflected in the flood; Body with shadow still pursued. For nature beats in perfect tune And rounds with rhyme her every rune; Whether she work in land or sea Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect nature's ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... golden carriages, as he had been told they did in the stories; and, although it never happened, he was quite convinced that it would happen if only he had patience. He would look for a grasshopper to turn into a hare; he would gently lay his stick on its back, and speak a rune. The insect would escape: he would bar its way. A few moments later he would be lying on his belly near to it, looking at it. Then he would have forgotten that he was a magician, and just amuse himself with turning the poor beast ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... now perished, but Bishop Browne tells us[1] that when he had photographs taken of the stone in 1886 "there was only one rune left, the 'Oi' of the king's name." "I have seen, however," he says, "the drawing made of the letters when the stone was found, and many of them were still legible when the Rev. Daniel Haigh worked at the stone." There ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... lonesome latter years (Fatal years!) To the dropping of my tears Danced the mad and mystic spheres In a rounded, reeling rune, 'Neath the moon, To the dripping and the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... aim his shaft; yonder, the figure of Leofwinesson himself, leaping forward with swift-stabbing sword. But whether they were English who fell or Danes who stood, she had no thought, no care; they meant no more to her than rune figures carved ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... romantic Are out of date as an old wife's rune. Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic—" When in at the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... idiom for it the word 'kyrka', cognate to English 'church' and Scots-dialect 'kirk' but pronounced /shir'k*/ in modern Swedish. Others say this is nonsense. Another idiom reported for the sign is 'runsten' /roon'stn/, derived from the fact that many of the interesting features are Viking rune-stones. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... of the Image Makers." This last is in itself so felicitous a composite of verse and criticism—a passage incredibly overlooked by the most meticulous of Cabell's glossarians—that it deserves a paper for itself. For here, set down prosaically as "the unfinished Rune of the Blackbirds" are four distinct parodies—including two insidious burlesques of Browning and Swinburne—on a theme which is familiar to us to-day in les mots justes of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis, after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... gloom is winnowed by the whirr of wood-doves' wings, Or the spray of the foam-bow rustles in the white dawn of the moon, And mournful billows moan aloud, Come soon, soon, soon, Come soon, O Death with the Heart of love and the secret of the rune. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... sword upheld, King Bele in King's-hall stood, Beside him Thorstein Vikingson, that yeoman good, His battle-friend with almost a century hoary, And deep-marked like a rune-stone with scars ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... Broke through her tender murmuring, And on her ceiling shades grotesque Reeled in a bacchanalian swing. Then all things swam, and like a ring Of bubbles welling from a spring Breaking in deepest coloring Flower-spirits paid her minist'ring. Sleep, fusing all her senses, soon Fanned over her in drowsy rune All ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... in perfect time And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... spake, helm of the Scyldings: 'Ask not after good tidings. Sorrow is renewed among the Dane-folk. Dead is AEschere, Yrmenlaf's elder brother, who read me rune and bore me rede; comrade at shoulder when we fended our heads in war and the boar-helms rang. Even so should we each be an atheling ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... uno nomine hic Jethro designatur. Loci illius puteum[EN59] Scriptores memorant fano circum extructo Arabibus sacrum, persuasis Mosem ibi Sipporam et sorores pastorum injuriis vindicasse; prout Exod., cap. ii., res describitur. Sed primis Muhammedici regni bellis universa fere, quae rune extabat, urbs vastata fuit." ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... she is like the mirror of the moon, (A sweet, small moon but newly come to birth) So full of heaven is she, so close to earth, So versed in holy spell and magic rune. ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... o' sun or moon, By banks o' Ayr, or Bonnie Doon, The waters lilt nae tender tune But sweeter seems Because they poured their limpid rune Through a' ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... held twelve sage-leaves, Plucked in her garden at noon; And over them she had whispered thrice The spell of a mystic rune. ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... precious thing in all the hoard. Had it been left with him Andvari would have thought that he still possessed a treasure, for this ring of itself could make gold. It was made out of gold that was refined of all impurities and it was engraven with a rune of power. ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... home to Isledale-river, and brought into the church porch the bag with the bones, and therewithal a rune-staff whereon this ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... translated into our modern geological nomenclature. The leaves of the Stone Book, as the rocky layers of the earth have been called, and the blue hieroglyphic page of heaven, also, are more intelligibly read by the aid of the mythic glosses of old religion, of Saga, Rune, and Voluspa. They spell the telluric records aright in their own peculiar language. The assaults of the Typhons and Joetuns upon the celestial dynasty, and their attempts to scale the fiery citadels of the gods by making ladders of mountains, indicate clearly enough the different revolutions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... the distance we caught glimpses of the sea. Before us were graceful, piled mountains, the crenelated mass of Les Trois Couronnes glittering with wintry diamonds. Against the morning sky, stood up, clear and cold, the cone of far La Rune. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the shoeing-tools they were very bewildered, till the novice asked leave to speak, and told what he had done to the farmer, and what he had said to Wayland-Smith, and how, though the dormitory light was burning, he had found the wonderful rune-carved sword in ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... antiquities of our own country and our kindred tribes during many centuries. These sun-dials are now very scarce, even in the high Scandinavian North, driven out as they have been by the watch, in the same manner as the ancient clog[1] or Rune-staff (the carved wooden perpetual almanac) has been extirpated by the printed calendar, and now only exists in the cabinets of the curious. In fifty years more sun-rings will probably be quite extinct throughout Europe. I hope this will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... palace stood; And with him Thorstein, Viking's son, the peasant good. His ancient war companion, grown old in glory, His brow was scarred like rune-stones, ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner



Words linked to "Rune" :   thorn, character, runic, runic letter



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com