Winterfylleth

Winterfylleth (Ƿinterfylleþ) was the Anglo-Saxon or Old English name for the month of October. It marked and celebrated the beginning of winter.[1]

The name of the month was recorded by the Venerable Bede thus:

Antiqui Anglorum populi [...] annum totum in duo tempora, hiemis et aestatis dispertiebant, sex menses [...] aestati tribuendo, sex reliquos hiemi; unde et mensem, quo hiemalia tempora incipiebant, Ƿintirfylliþ appellabant, composito nomine ab hieme et plenilunio, quia videlicet a plenilunio ejusdem mensis hiems sortiretur initium [...] Ƿintirfylliþ potest dici compositio novo nomine hiemi plenium.[2]

The old English people split the year into two seasons, summer and winter, placing six months — during which the days are longer than the nights — in summer, and the other six in winter. They called the month when the winter season began Ƿintirfylliþ, a word composed of "winter" and "full moon", because winter began on the first full moon of that month.

See also

• Anglo-Saxon
• Germanic calendar
• Old English
• Shire (Middle-earth)#Calendar

References

1. "Article on English Culture - The Anglo-Saxon Heathen Year". wearetheenglish.com. Retrieved 2014-09-20.
2. Bosworth, Joseph. "An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online." Winter-fylleþ. Ed. Thomas Northcote Toller and Others. Comp. Sean Christ and Ondřej Tichý. Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, 21 March 2010. Web. 20 September 2014. <http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/035945>.