West Saxon

American  

noun

1. the Old English dialect of the West Saxon kingdom, dominant after a.d. c850 and the medium of nearly all the literary remains of Old English.

2. any of the English of the period before the Norman Conquest who lived in the region south of the Thames and west of Surrey and Sussex.

3. a person whose native tongue was West Saxon.

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adjective

1. of or relating to the West Saxons or their dialect.

West Saxon British  

adjective

1. of or relating to Wessex, its inhabitants, or their dialect

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noun

1. the dialect of Old English spoken in Wessex: the chief literary dialect of Old English See also Anglian Kentish

2. an inhabitant of Wessex

Etymology

Origin of West Saxon

1350–1400; Middle English, for Old English Westseaxan Wessex; see west, Saxon

Example Sentences

New research indicates the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset was originally carved as an image of Hercules to mark a muster station for West Saxon armies.

From BBC • Jan. 1, 2024

Struck at a West Saxon mint, possibly in Southampton or Winchester, the coin bears the King's title 'Ecgbeorht Rex' around a monogram of the word Saxon.

From BBC • Jul. 31, 2021

About this time the division of the West Saxon diocese is carried out, Aldhelm being appointed to Sherborne and Daniel to Winchester; the South Saxons receive a bishop of their own for the first time.

From Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, Cuthbert

They are not West Saxon, but they are part of a tradition much more ancient than any pedigree of the West Saxon kings.

From Beowulf An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by Chambers, R. W.

In 835 Athelstan drove the Britons across the Tamar and made that river the boundary between the Briton and the West Saxon of Devon.

From Cornwall by Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)