eldertongue

Modern English → Old English

Old English word for never

5 headwords match “never”, ranked by the scoring in the data pipeline. The five strongest follow; næfre ranks first.

  1. 1

    næfre

    score 21

    adverb

    never — never

    • opens the headword's definition
    • listed as an English descendant
  2. 2

    næfre ma

    score 10

    adverb

    never — never again

    • opens the headword's definition
  3. 3

    næfre eft

    score 10

    adverb

    never — never again

    • opens the headword's definition
  4. 4

    na

    score 5

    adverb

    never — not

  5. 5

    nahwær

    score 3

    adverb

    never — nowhere (in no place)

How this ranking works

Scores are computed once, when the site is built, from the Wiktionary data. Every headword whose definitions mention “never” gets the points below; the candidates are then sorted by total. The score is shown on each entry above so the order can be checked rather than trusted.

The English word opens the headword's definition+10
It appears later in the first definition+6
It appears in any definition+3
It is in the headword's links+2
It is listed as an English descendant (etymological evidence)+9
The headword has an inflection table+3
Part of speech is a proper noun−5
Part of speech is a verb (-ian derivations are noisy)−3
The headword is an alternative form−6
The first definition is longer than three words−2

A candidate has to be a real headword with its own entry: inflected forms and grammatical terminology (genitive, nominative, preterite, …) never appear here.

Not one of these?

The match may be a different sense of “never”, or an inflected form rather than a headword. Look up the form directly — the entry page marks the grammatical case.

Candidates derived from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0). Each entry links to its source page. · CC BY-SA 4.0 and attribution · CC BY-SA 4.0