meed

The word meed is one of the oldest terms in our language, having been part of English for about 1,000 years. An early form of the word appeared in the Old English classic Beowulf, and it can be found in works by literary luminaries including Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and Ben Jonson. Its Old English form, mēd, is akin to terms found in the ancestral versions of many European languages, including Old High German, Old Swedish, and ancient Greek. In Modern English, the venerable meed is most likely to be found in poetic contexts.