Word.ws English Dictionary

runelore

runelore noun: the study of runes, typically for magical or religious purposes.

Noun

runelore (uncountable)

  1. The study of runes, typically for magical or religious purposes.
    • In fact so serious a discrepancy could only arise in the infancy of this little-studied Old-Northern Rune-lore, when the material was so comparatively slender and the few monuments gave scarcely any acknowledged formulas.1884, George Stephens, The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England, London: Williams and Norgate, page 213
    • Runelore is dominated by the figure of Ódhinn. It is the path exemplified by him that the runester seeks to travel.1989, Edred Thorsson, Runelore: A Handbook of Esoteric Runology, York Beach, Me.: S. Weiser, page 175

Origin of runelore

From rune + lore.

Questions about runelore

What does runelore mean?
Runelore means the study of runes, typically for magical or religious purposes.
What part of speech is runelore?
Runelore is a noun.

Words near runelore in the dictionary

  1. runecasts
  2. runecraft
  3. runed
  4. runeless
  5. runelike
  6. runelore
  7. runemaster
  8. runemasters
  9. runemistress
  10. runemistresses
  11. runer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: runelore (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: “runelore.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/runelore. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.