levin

From Middle English levene. Spellings in Middle English and Early Modern English include leven, levin, levyn, leiven, and leyven.^[1] The earlier etymology is less clear. It is thought to be related to Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌿𐌷𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌹 (lauhmuni) (which see for some more),^[2] ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright, to shine”). Possibly a regular reflex, possibly North Germanic loan, or possibly from a lost substrate.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈlɛvɪn/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -ɛvɪn

levin (countable and uncountable, plural levins)

1. (archaic, poetic) Lightning; a bolt of lightning; also, a bright flame or light.
   • 1864, George MacDonald, The Old Nurse's Story:

     His soul was like the night around us now, dark, and sultry, and silent, but lighted up by the red levin of wrath and torn by the bellowings of thunder-passion.

   • [c. 1280, “Godrich Displays Great Prowess”, in Frederic Madden, editor, The Lay of Havelok the Dane (in Middle English), London: N[icholas] Trübner & Company, published 1868, page 76, line 2690:

     And forth rith al so leuin fares.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)]

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 48, page 475:

     [N]either blood in face nor life in hart / It left, but both did quite drye vp, and blaſt; / As percing leuin, which the inner part / Of euery thing conſumes, and calcineth by art.

   • 1848, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Preface to the Second London Edition”, in Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. [...] In Two Volumes, copyright edition, volume I, Leipzig: Bernh[ard] Tauchnitz Jun., →OCLC, page IX:

     [...] I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time – they or their seed might escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.

   • 1854, Virgil, “The First Georgic”, in W[illiam] Sewell, transl., The Georgics of Virgil, Literally and Rhythmically Translated, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: J. H. Parker, →OCLC, pages 20–21:

     Never, elsewhen, from heaven when all serene / Fell there more levin-bolts; nor flamed so oft / Comets with curses fraught.

• levin brand

• Elvin, Nevil, V line, V-line, liven, v-line

levin

1. Obsolete form of eleeven.

• “levin, num.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, retrieved 7 June 2024, reproduced from William A[lexander] Craigie, A[dam] J[ack] Aitken [et al.], editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.