Word.ws English Dictionary

gift hall

gift hall noun: a large communal building used in early Germanic and Norse societies as a place where valuable gifts were distributed to loyal warriors, thanes, retainers, etc.

Noun

gift hall (plural gift halls)

  1. A large communal building used in early Germanic and Norse societies as a place where valuable gifts were distributed to loyal warriors, thanes, retainers, etc.
    • Then morning came and many a warrior
      gathered,as I've heard, around the gift-hall,
      clan chiefs flocking from far and near[.]1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 27

Forms of gift hall

pluralgift halls

Origin of gift hall

Calque of Old English gifheall, from gif (“gift”) + heall (“hall”).

Questions about gift hall

What does gift hall mean?
Gift hall means a large communal building used in early Germanic and Norse societies as a place where valuable gifts were distributed to loyal warriors, thanes, retainers, etc.
What part of speech is gift hall?
Gift hall is a noun.
What is the plural of gift hall?
The plural of gift hall is gift halls.

Words near gift hall in the dictionary

  1. gift from the goddesses
  2. gift from the gods
  3. gift from the heavens
  4. gift giver
  5. gift givers
  6. gift hall
  7. gift halls
  8. gift horse
  9. gift horses
  10. gift matching
  11. gift of gab

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gift hall (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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