#056 - Uhtceare

[mxcatmoon]

This week's word is

UHTCEARE

(n.) Pronounced- oot-key-are-a
An Old English word meaning ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying.’

The old English term 'uhtceare' refers to the anxiety one experiences right before dawn. More specifically, it is the anxiety experienced by a person when they wake up too early and can't get back to sleep.

From Mark Forsyth’s – The Horologicon:

That wretched uhtceare,
that torments our peace
and will not leave rest unassaulted.

Note: this old English word isn't even in the dictionary. Although it's rare, I thought it was such a fun word and might inspire some interesting fic.

Edited to add: There are alternate spellings, although there seem to be different opinions on them. For the purposes of this challenge, you're welcome to use whichever one you want. Here are some of the ones I found:

Wiktionary: 

ūhtċeare: inflection of ūhtcaru:

1. accusative/genitive/dative singular

2. accusative plural

Reddit discussions:

"The difference between ċearu and ċeare is that ċearu or caru was used for the nominative case and ċeare was used for the other cases."

"Depends on how you want to use it, I guess. A morning-grief bothers me: uhtcearu. Morning-griefs ruin my life: uhtceara. I have lots of morning griefs: uhtceare. (also, I hate morning-griefs) My breakfast has been spoiled by morning-griefs: uhtcearum."

 

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Very cool. Proof there's a word for everything.

[lauradi7dw]

In the poem "The Wife's Lament," one of those in the 10th century Exeter Book collection, it's spelled uhtcearu. Old English has case endings, so maybe that's just a variant of a very rarely seen word.

[mxcatmoon]

Yes, according to Word Sense it's an alternate spelling. Searching the Internet for uhtcearu mostly brings up a death metal band and a Reddit discussion, where there are differing opinions on several alternate spellings. For the purposes of this challenge, you're welcome to use whichever one you want. I'm going to edit the original post with a few of the explanations I found.

[lauradi7dw]

I don't really write fiction, other than small scenarios in my head. But this is what I blogged in 2009:

>>I have been listening in the car to "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman.
http://www.levgrossman.com/magicians.html I'm nearly done. I like the book a lot, although I don't currently like any of the characters. This morning one of them was experiencing near-depression after a long sorrowful night and I thought "he's having uhtcearu" (anxiety before dawn).<<

[mxcatmoon]

Thanks for sharing.

I'm not an expert on Old English, so I'll let people use whichever one they feel is correct. I added some info I found to the original post.

[mdlbear]

I'm not sure having a word for it will help with the thing itself, but it's still worth knowing and might help a little.

[mxcatmoon]

Right?! I know that thing all too well, and I figured a lot of others do, too.

💖

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

I love the idea of pulling in words that are more obscure or archaic in nature!

Re: 💖

[mxcatmoon]

I'll be on the lookout for more, I too think it would be fun to have one of those once in a while. I'm not sure where this one came from, it was just on the list of words I made back when I started the community, and it just happened to be the one the Random Word Generator came up with for this week.