karl

nouncommon in dialogue

A medieval Scandinavian freeman.

noun

1
historicalA medieval Scandinavian freeman.
The largest group in Viking society were the karls, who were free men and women. Many karls owned their own farmsteads; others rented land from rich landowners.
There were three kinds of Viking: thralls, karls and jarls. Thralls were the slaves. They were owned by karls and jarls. They did most of the hard work and the worst, dirtiest jobs. The karls were ordinary folk like farmers, craftsmen, blacksmiths and hunters.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old Norse karl. Doublet of carl, ceorl, and churl.

Forms

plural: karls

Kari · A female given name from Swedish, of recent usage, equivalent…Karim · A male given name from Arabic.Karin · A female given name from Danish [in turn from Ancient Greek…

karl · A medieval Scandinavian freeman.

Karl · A male given name from the Germanic languages, equivalent to…karma · The sum total of a person's actions, which determine the…Karma · A female given name.

The neighbouring pages — Alphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.