thingman

See also: Thingman

English

Etymology

Calque of Old Norse thingman, which is þing (“thing”) +‎ maðr (“man”), or else a back-formation from "thingmen", which was borrowed morpheme for morpheme from þingmenn (“thingmen”).

Noun

thingman (plural thingmen)

1. (historical, usually in the plural) One of several men gathered at a thing, for example to settle a dispute over a debt.
   • 2008, The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law, translated from Old Norwegian by Laurence Marcellus Larson, page 63

     Now if the debtor pleads that "I do not know the law but I will comply with whatever the thingmen think lawful," he [the creditor] must summon him before the thing after five nights, at the shortest, and five times five at the longest, if he knows when the thing is to meet; […] it is then the duty of the thingmen to decide the matter and to award him his money.

2. (historical, usually in the plural) (One of several) men serving as the army, particularly the mercenary army, (of a specific ruler).
   • 1989, Law and literature in medieval Iceland: Ljósvetninga saga and Valla-Ljóts saga, Theodore Murdock Andersson, William Ian Miller, page 8:

     A thingman and chieftain owed each other duties of support. […] The ideal is well stated by Eyjolf to his own thingmen as he requests their support in his struggles against the Ljosvetning kin group […]

See also

• Thingmen, Thingman

Anagrams

• manthing, night man, night-man, nightman