Beowulf may have been written any time between the 8th and the early 11th Century by an unknown or most it was in the 8th nevised that has come century. It was probably originally in although the single manuscript down to us (which dates from around 1000) contains a bewildering mix of Northumbrian, West Saxon and Anglian dialects. The 3,182 lines of the work shows that Old English was already a fully time, with a particular emphasis on alliteration and percussive effects. Even at this early stage before the subsequent waves of lexical evident. of English vocabulary, as well as its predilection for synonyms and s of meanings, is For are example, the poem uses 36 different words for hero, 20 for man, 1 for battle and 11 for ship. There also many interesting kennings" or allusive compound words, such as hronrad (iterally, whale-road, meaning the sea) benhus (bone-house, meaning body) and beedoleoma meaning only of the 903 compound nouns in Beowut, 578 are used once only, and 518 of them are known this one poem.