odal
odal noun: among the early and medieval Teutonic peoples, especially Scandinavians, the heritable land held by the various odalmen constituting a family or kindred of freeborn tribesmen.
Noun (1)
odal (countable and uncountable, plural odals)
- Among the early and medieval Teutonic peoples, especially Scandinavians, the heritable land held by the various odalmen constituting a family or kindred of freeborn tribesmen.
- At the time of the laws owners of odal had, it appears, certain powers of selling their odal, but even then it was not an uncontrolled right of a man to do what he would with his own.1902, Frederic Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, Longmans, Green and Co., page 273
- The ownership and claim of such land.
- Generations of ancestors may have given an extended family the right to the land, in the same way that later Norse settlers obtained an odal right to the land they farmed.2000, Liv Kjørsvik Schei, The Islands of Orkney, Colin Baxter, →ISBN, page 15
- A rune in the Elder Futhark, ᛟ, associated with ancestral land.
Adjective (1)
odal (not comparable)
- Of or relating to odal land.
Adjective (2)
odal (not comparable)
- Of or relating to an ode or odes.
- But what’s clear from the extraordinary proliferation of contemporary lyric odes, and the reactions to the ecstatic claims of these odes, is that the question of poetry, sociality, and globality has become unavoidable: contemporary poetry, which has long resisted incorporation into the discourse of...2016, Walt Hunter, “Planetary Dejection: An Ode to the Commons”, in Symploke, volume 24, numbers 1–2, page 227
Noun (2)
odal
- A large liana native to India and Southeastern Asia, Sarcostigma kleinii, used to produce therapeutic seed oil.
- Extract the oil from the seeds of Odal (Sarcostigma kleinii) and apply on the affected part of the body.1998, K. Jose Boban, Tribal Ethnomedicine: Continuity and Change, page 235
Noun (3) capitalized: Odal
Odal (countable and uncountable, plural Odals)
- Alternative letter-case form of odal
- Images of the CPAC stage went viral this weekend as many noted a resemblance to the Odal or Othala Rune, a symbol emblazoned on some Nazi uniforms.2021 March 1, Jaclyn Peiser, “As CPAC dismisses claims that its stage resembled a Nazi insignia, Hyatt calls hate symbols ‘abhorrent’”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN
- In an email to Politico, Meyer said: “Like the hydra, you can cut off my head and hold it up for the world to see, but two more will quietly appear and be working in the shadows. Slating Trump to speak at [Madison Square Garden]^([sic]), putting ‘poisoning the blood’ in his speeches, setting up...2024 November 5, Lorenzo Tondo, quoting Luke Meyer, “Trump staffer fired from Republican party for being a white supremacist”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Forms of odal
| plural | odals |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Odal |
| alternative form | odel |
| alternative form | odhal |
| alternative form | udal |
| alternative form | othala |
| alternative form | adul |
| plural | Odals |
Origin of odal
From Icelandic óðal (“estate”). Cognate with Norwegian odel, odal (“allodium, patrimony”), Old English ēþel (“homeland”). Compare athel, Odelsthing.
From ode + -al.
Borrowed from Tamil [Term?].
Words formed from odal
Questions about odal
- What does odal mean?
- Odal means among the early and medieval Teutonic peoples, especially Scandinavians, the heritable land held by the various odalmen constituting a family or kindred of freeborn tribesmen.
- What part of speech is odal?
- Odal can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of odal?
- The plural of odal is odals.
Words near odal in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: odal (page history and authors); Odal (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “odal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/odal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.