Nora Caplan-Bricker Jordan S. Rubin 
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The original sagas were Icelandic prose narratives that were roughly analogous to modern historical novels. They were penned in the 12th and 13th centuries, and blended fact and fiction to tell the tales of famous rulers, legendary heroes, and average folks of Iceland and Norway. And they were aptly named: saga traces back to an Old Norse root that means "tale." The English word first referred only to those original Icelandic stories, but saga later broadened to cover other narratives reminiscent of those, and the word was eventually further generalized to cover any long, complicated scenario.
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A Brief History of Saga
Saga was originally used to describe Icelandic prose narratives composed in the 12th and 13th centuries. The word first appeared in English in that sense during the 18th century; by the middle of the 19th century we were employing saga in a somewhat looser fashion, in reference to modern stories involving heroic deeds that bore some resemblance to the Icelandic tales of yore. By the 20th century saga had come to be applied to other written works, typically a novel or series of novels, especially those that took place over a significant period of time. Today the word may also be used to describe a long and drawn-out story that is either written or spoken (as in “my neighbor told me the saga of his divorce again”). Saga comes from an Old Norse word of the same spelling. It does not have any connection with the adjective sagacious (“possessing quick intellectual perceptions”), which comes from the Latin sagax (“sagacious”).
Examples of saga in a Sentence
Mia Cathell, The Washington Examiner, 18 Sep. 2025
But the deal is still to be signed off between Knight Riders and Fairplex, a non-profit organization that has a partnership with the County of Los Angeles, with the USA Cricket saga becoming a complication.
—Tristan Lavalette, Forbes.com, 17 Sep. 2025
The king was recently briefly reunited with his estranged younger son, and the knowledge that no details from that encounter leaked suggests that one long-running royal saga might have an end in sight.
—Alexander Larman, Time, 16 Sep. 2025
The Manoah saga is ongoing and merits thousands of words of its own, but that's not the main story here.
—Jackson Roberts, MSNBC Newsweek, 16 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Saga.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/saga. Accessed 18 Sep. 2025.
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saga
noun
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