kenning
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkɛnɪŋ/
rhymes: -ɛnɪŋ
Forms: form: kennings
Etymology: From Middle English kenning, kening (“instruction, teaching; experience, knowledge; sight, view”), from kennen (“to make known, point out, reveal; to direct, instruct, teach; to know, perceive”) + -ing. Kennen is derived from Old English cennan (“to make known, declare”), from Proto-West Germanic *kannijan, from Proto-Germanic *kannijaną (“to make known”), the causative form of *kunnaną (“to know, be familiar with, recognize; to be able to, know how”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to know”).
Compare Danish kending (“acquaintance”), and see further at ken. By surface analysis, ken + -ing.
Senses: examples: text: Touching the moſt remarkeable things of the Country and our proceeding from the 17 of Auguſt 1585. till the 18. of Iune 1586. we made Roanoack our habitation. The vtmoſt of our diſcouery Southward was Secotan as we eſteemed 80. leagues from Roanoacke. The paſſage from thence was thought a broad ſound within the maine, being without kenning of land, yet full of flats and ſhoulds that our Pinnaſſe could not paſſe, […]
ref: 1624, Richard Grenville, “Sir Richard Grenuills Voyage to Virginia, for Sir Walter Raleigh. 1585.”, in Iohn Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: […], London: […] I[ohn] D[awson] and I[ohn] H[aviland] for Michael Sparkes, →OCLC, book 1; reprinted in The Generall Historie of Virginia, … (Bibliotheca Americana), Cleveland, Oh.: The World Publishing Company, 1966, →OCLC, page 5:
text: And becauſe in the beginning of my Trouble, when in the midſt of the Tempeſt, I had a kenning of the Harbour, which I hope now by your Majeſty's Favour I am entring into; I made a tender to your Majeſty of two Works, a Hiſtory of England, and a Digeſt of your Laws: as I have performed a Part of the one; ſo I have herewith ſent your Majeſty, by way of an Epiſtle, a New Offer of the other.
ref: 1733, Francis Bacon, “XXIX. To the King; Presenting the History of Henry VII. and a Proposal for a New Digest of the Laws of England.”, in Peter Shaw, compiler, The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High-Chancellor of England; Methodized, and Made English, from the Originals. With Occasional Notes, to Explain what is Obscure; and Shew how Far the Several Plans of the Author, for the Advancement of All the Parts of Knowledge, have been Executed to the Present Time. In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Printed for J. J. and P. Knapton [et al.], →OCLC, supplement V (Select Letters upon Various Occasions: Relating to the Author’s Life and Writings), section II (Letters Relating to the Author’s Writings), page 504:
text: "Saul of my pody, put you are wrang there, my friend," answered Robin, with composure; "it is your fat Englishmen that eat up our Scots cattle, puir things." / "I wish there was a summat to eat up their drovers," said another; "a plain Englishman canna make bread without a kenning of them."
ref: 1827, [Walter Scott], chapter XIV, in Chronicles of the Canongate; […], volume I (The Two Drovers), Edinburgh: […] [Ballantyne and Co.] for Cadell and Co.; London: Simpkin and Marshall, →OCLC, pages 321–322:
glosses: Sight, view; specifically a distant view at sea.
examples: text: Scylley is a Kenning, that is to ſay about an xx. Miles from the very Weſteſte Point of Cornewaulle.
ref: 1711, John Leland, edited by Thomas Hearne, The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary. … Publish’d from the Original MS. in the Bodleian Library by Thomas Hearne M.A. To which is Added Antoninus’s Itinerary through Britain, with Various Readings and Dʳ. Robert Talbot’s Annotations upon It, volume III, Oxford: Printed at the Theater for the publisher, →OCLC, page 7:
text: The obſcure text, of which the light is only to be ſeen by groping our way through "antres vaſt," and at times through "deſarts idle" of earth beneath, is frequently ſo highly elevated in the page, that it is barely entitled to [John] Milton's appellation of darkneſs viſible; and now and then it ſoars even above this, mounting (to uſe an old phraſe,) beyond a kenning.
ref: 1793 September, “Art. XII. The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare; Collated Verbatim with the Most Authentic Copies, and Revised: [...] By Edmund Malone. Crown 8vo. 10 Vols. about 600 Pages in each. The First Volume Divided into Two. 3l. 17s. Boards. Cadell, &c. 1790. [book review]”, in The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, Enlarged, volume XII, London: Printed for R[alph] Griffiths; and sold by T[homas] Becket, in Pall Mall, published 1794, →OCLC, footnote, page 56:
text: If a person hires a ship and loads her or not entirely, and wishes to unload her, before she sets sail, he shall pay half the ship’s freight. But if the ship has sailed a kenning’s way seawards, he shall pay the shipmaster his full freight. [Footnote: kenning […] This phrase is applied in the Rutter of the Sea to signify the distance from one headland to another in sight. Vol. I., p. 115.]
ref: 1876, “Jus Maritimum Lubecense, in Usus Osterlingorum Descriptum, Anno 1299 = Code of Maritime Law, Drawn Up at Lubeck for the Use of the Osterlings, A.D. 1299”, in Travers Twiss, editor, Momenta Juridica. The Black Book of the Admiralty. Appendix.—Part IV. [...] Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls (Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages), volume IV, London: Longman & Co., Paternoster Row; Trübner & Co., Ludgate Hill; …, →OCLC, paragraph XVIII, page 369:
glosses: The range or extent of vision, especially at sea; (by extension) a marine measure of approximately twenty miles.
examples: text: put in a kenning of salt
text: His father was none so ill a man, though a kenning on the wrong side of the law, and no friend to my family, that I should waste my breath to be defending him!
ref: 1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Heather on Fire”, in Catriona, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC, page 111:
glosses: As little as one can discriminate or recognize; a small portion, a little.
Synonyms: sense: sight, view, range of vision
word: ken
Derived terms: miskenning