kenning
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
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.
Inflected forms:
form: kennings
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Sight, view; specifically a distant view at sea.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: 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, […]
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.
"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."
gloss: The range or extent of vision, especially at sea; (by extension) a marine measure of approximately twenty miles.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: Scylley is a Kenning, that is to ſay about an xx. Miles from the very Weſteſte Point of Cornewaulle.
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.
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.]
gloss: As little as one can discriminate or recognize; a small portion, a little.
pos: noun
examples: put in a kenning of salt
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!
Derived words: miskenning
Translations: