Word.ws English Dictionary

mead hall

mead hall noun: a large communal building used in early Germanic and Norse societies as a place for feasting, drinking, socializing, and governance, serving also as the residence of a chieftain or king and symbolising the heart of the community or tribe.

Noun

mead hall (plural mead halls)

  1. A large communal building used in early Germanic and Norse societies as a place for feasting, drinking, socializing, and governance, serving also as the residence of a chieftain or king and symbolising the heart of the community or tribe.
    • I have [...] stopped on my way home at the mead halls of the Franks across the sea.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 18
    • he handed down orders
      for men to work on a great mead-hall
      meant to be a wonder of the world forever.1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 5

Forms of mead hall

pluralmead halls

Origin of mead hall

Revived from Old English meduheall.

Questions about mead hall

What does mead hall mean?
Mead hall means a large communal building used in early Germanic and Norse societies as a place for feasting, drinking, socializing, and governance, serving also as the residence of a chieftain or king and symbolising the heart of the community or tribe.
What part of speech is mead hall?
Mead hall is a noun.
What is the plural of mead hall?
The plural of mead hall is mead halls.

Words near mead hall in the dictionary

  1. meacocks
  2. meaconing
  3. mead
  4. mead bench
  5. mead benches
  6. mead hall
  7. mead halls
  8. mead horn
  9. mead moon
  10. mead moons
  11. Mead Valley

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mead 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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