sail-road

English

Etymology

Calque of Old English seglrād, a kenning formed from segl (“sail”) + rād (“road”).

Noun

the sail-road

  1. (kenning, literary, rare) The ocean; the open sea.
    • 1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 47:
      There were writhing sea-dragosn
      and monsters slouching on slopes by the cliff,
      serpents and wild things such as those that often
      surface at dawn to roam the sail-road
      and doom the voyage.
    • 2013, Stephen Baxter, Alternate Histories‎[1], London: Gollanz:
      Never before had she sailed into the open sea, and out of sight of land; never had she taken the sail road.
    • 2013, Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland, Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 218:
      [N]or for all their skill might those dwellers in the earth see the sail-road, how this greatest of tents was tied, when he honoured with glory that people loyal to their Lord.
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