Dictionary of Old English Corpus Basic Search

Dictionary of Old English Corpus Basic Search

DOE Corpus

How to perform basic DOE Corpus searches finding one word in the corpus, restricting searches to one text or one class of texts, accessing bibliographical information for citations, and including compounds and inflected forms in searches.

Alexandra Bolintineanu

Welcome to the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. Old English is the earliest form of the English language, spoken and written between 600 and 1150 AD. The DOE Corpus contains at least one version of every known Old English text. So when you search the Corpus, you search almost every word of Old English in the world. This video shows you how to perform a basic search of the Corpus. Let’s get started with the Old English word helm, origin of the Modern English ‘helm’ in the sense of ‘helmet.’ In Old English, helm means head covering, protection, but also crown or summit. So let’s see how helm was used in Old English. We enter helm in the top search box on the left and click the “Search” button. We get 110 citations that contain the word “helm.” If you want, you can look at the usage of helm just in poetry, or just in verse, or just in gloss. Select “Restrict by class” and pick the option “verse.” Now you have poetic usages only, beginning with the poem Genesis A: [3400 (112)] Her ærest gesceop ece drihten, helm eallwihta, heofon and eorðan, rodor arærde, and þis rume land gestaþelode strangum mihtum, frea ælmihtig. Here first created the eternal Lord, the helm—that is, protector—of all creatures, earth and heaven, raised up the sky, established this spacious land with strong might, the almighty lord. To see a text’s full title and bibliographical information, click on the hyperlink at the citation’s start. Back to the search: You can restrict your results even further. Suppose you’re curious how the Beowulf-poet uses helm. Lift the class restriction and go to “Restrict by Works” instead. To learn how the DOE abbreviates Beowulf, go to “List of Texts,” from the top menu. Enter “Beowulf” in the search box below the alphabet. Now you know both the Old English Short Title and the Cameron number. Go back to “Home.” Under “Restrict by Works,” choose “Short Title” and enter “Beo.” You have 28 citations that exemplify the usage of helm in Beowulf. But what if you’re looking not just for the word helm as such, but for the word helm in alternate spellings, inflected forms, even in compounds? Surround it with asterisks, which allow wildcard searches. Suddenly, even just in Beowulf, you have 43 matches instead of 28. This search, the wildcard search, turns up words that contain helm: inflected forms, like the dative under helme; or compounds, like grimhelmas (‘visored helmets’) or helmberend (‘helm-bearing’). This video showed you the basics of Corpus searches: how to find one word in the Old English corpus; how to restrict your search to one kind of text, or even just one text; how to access bibliographical information for a citation; how to include compounds and inflected forms in your search. Happy searching with the Dictionary of Old English!