Word.ws English Dictionary

Hengist

Hengist proper noun: one of a pair of brothers (the other being Horsa) said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century, and to have been the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.

Proper noun

Hengist

  1. One of a pair of brothers (the other being Horsa) said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century, and to have been the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
    • Their captains were two brothers, called Hengist and Horsa.1905, Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, Our Island Story, page 37

Origin of Hengist

From Old English hengest (“stallion”).

Questions about Hengist

What does Hengist mean?
Hengist means one of a pair of brothers (the other being Horsa) said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century, and to have been the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
What part of speech is Hengist?
Hengist is a proper noun.

Words near Hengist in the dictionary

  1. Henghua
  2. Henghuas
  3. Henghwa
  4. Henghwas
  5. hengiform
  6. Hengist
  7. Hengoed
  8. Hengqin
  9. Hengrove
  10. hengs
  11. Hengshan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hengist (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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Cite this entry: “Hengist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hengist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.