Guide · Sources
Old English dictionaries online, compared
Three resources cover most online Old English lookups: Bosworth–Toller, Wiktionary and this site. They are not interchangeable. Bosworth–Toller is a historical dictionary with dated quotations, Wiktionary is the open dictionary this site is built from, and eldertongue adds complete inflection tables, IPA and Bēowulf links to Wiktionary's entries.
| Bosworth–Toller | Wiktionary | eldertongue | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898) and its Supplement (1921), digitised online. | A collaboratively edited dictionary; the source of every entry here. | A dictionary of Old English built from Wiktionary data, one page per headword. |
| Best for | Historical senses and dated quotations from Old English texts. | Current entries, quotations, etymology and cognates, alongside other languages. | Complete inflection tables, IPA, syllables and the Bēowulf lines that use the word. |
| Limits | The scholarship of 1898–1921, digitised from the printed book. | Coverage and table completeness vary from entry to entry. | One source: a gap in Wiktionary is a gap here, and headwords omit macrons. |
| Start at | bosworthtoller.com | Wiktionary: Old English | eldertongue.com |
Bosworth–Toller
Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller's An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary was published in 1898, with a Supplement in 1921. Its entries give historical definitions and quotations from Old English texts. The online text is a digitisation of the printed book, so it reflects the scholarship of its period. Entry pages here quote Bosworth–Toller where the citation data exists, and the quotations are credited on Attribution.
Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a collaboratively edited dictionary, and its Old English entries are the source of every page here, read through the kaikki.org machine-readable extraction. Because it is edited continuously, an entry can be more current than a printed dictionary. Because it is a wiki, depth varies: some Old English entries are incomplete, and an inflection table is present only where a contributor has supplied one.
eldertongue
Entry pages here turn a Wiktionary headword into one page: senses, IPA with syllables, the full declension or conjugation table, every inflected form as a link, etymology, and — where the poem attests the word — the Bēowulf lines that use it. The same data is available to programs through the MCP server and OpenAPI description. The site adds structure and presentation, not new definitions.
Which should you use?
Use Bosworth–Toller when you need a historical definition or a dated quotation; use Wiktionary when you need the widest and most current entry; use this site when you need the inflection table, a lookup from an inflected form to its headword, or a citation from Bēowulf. For a worked example, compare the paradigm of strong a-stem nouns with the same word's entry in each dictionary.
Where to go next
- Noun declension classes — how the strong and weak declensions divide.
- Letters and pronunciation — þ, ð, æ, ƿ and macrons.
- Bēowulf, line by line — 3,184 lines, every word linked to its entry.
Last updated 8 November 2026. eldertongue is independent and not affiliated with Wiktionary, the Wikimedia Foundation or Bosworth–Toller.