Talk:hof

Clearly, thru Heathens (disclaimer, I'm not a Heathen), the word has been revived. While most Heathens attribute the word to Scandinavian languages where the word is still in use, the word did exist in Old English in the same form with the same meaning. I took three separate usages of the word from different parts of the US ... there are many more.


 * 1) temple, sanctuary, hall
 * A Hof dedicated to the worship of the Aesir and the Vanir &mdash; here
 * ... organization located in the Twin Cities, recently purchased a building to be used as a Hof. &mdash; here
 *  ...is to acquire tribal lands, build a Hof and Hall, &mdash; here --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 01:32, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You are right that these exist, of course, the question is where and on whose authority, and whence. The fact is that neither OED nor any of the other dictionaries available under onelook.com (yeah, except from this page here which is also crawled by onelook) recognizes any English word "hof", excepting the alternative spelling of the obsolete (Middle English) verb hove (as in behove) given by OED, because OED basically moonlights as a Middle English dictionary. The Neopagan sense may be cited, but this is internet/subculture slang and should be documented as such (preferably with a date for earliest known use, which so far seems to be 2006). --Dbachmann (talk) 07:36, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * the Neopagan meaning you cite is a recent loan from Icelandic
 * the meaning in Ulrike lived in a farm hof is a loan from German. Or in fact not even a "loan", it is just a German word used here in an English context for some cultural flavour (which is how loanwords get started, but you cannot call it a loanword before it sees regular usage and is picked up by dictionaries)

I found the loan made explicit by Strimska in 2005,
 * Asatruarfelagid lacks a central religious temple, or hof in Icelandic. Constructing a hof has been high on the members' wish list for many years.


 * he is talking about Iceland
 * he introduces hof in italics as an Icelandic word
 * he goes on to drop the italics after the first introduciton, now using the word as a technical term "temple in Icelandic neopaganism"

I also found 1990s usage, in Vargsmal, where Vikernes says he wants to burn ten churches for every [historical] hof destroyed, but since Vikernes is Norwegian, I am not sure if 1990s usage was in English or in Norwegian, and in any case he is also just giving the native Norwegian word, not necessarily "Englished".

From the above, saying the term was introduced into neopagan jargon in the 1990s or 2000s is probably correct. --Dbachmann (talk) 08:02, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hof in German
Hof is a word in German. I don't know the etymology but could another Wiki editor add it? See http://en.pons.com/translate?q=hof&l=deen&in=&lf=de. DBlomgren (talk) 23:59, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary is case-sensitive, so the entry is at Hof. — Ungoliant (falai) 01:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)