fyrd
/fɪɹd/noun
fyrd is a noun meaning “In early Anglo-Saxon times, an army that was mobilized from freemen to defend their shire, or from select representatives to join a royal expedition” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-Y-R-D, and it appears about once in every 59 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fyrd is fyrds.
What does fyrd mean?
noun
- 1
In early Anglo-Saxon times, an army that was mobilized from freemen to defend their shire, or from select representatives to join a royal expedition.
Below the king were the eoldermen, the ruling nobility. The eolderman was the king's 'viceroy' in a shire, responsible for administration and justice, for calling out the fyrd and leading its forces in the field.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce fyrd?
- /fɝd/
- /fɚd/
- /fɪɹd/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: FyrdPronunciation.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of fyrd
- fyrds plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fyrd?
Fyrd appears about once in every 59 million words in written English, the 240,237th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does fyrd come from?
Learned borrowing from Old English fyrd.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).