Bernard Mees, in his 2015 exploration1 of the etymologies of giant-terms in Old English, suggests the following:
The development of the new “giant” word ent seems likely to have entailed a West Saxon (re)interpretation of the two phonologically similar giantish forms as complementary descriptions (perhaps as part of an alliterating trope, eotenas and entas; cf. ealdsweord eotonisc / entiscne helm) as opposed to the more implacably threatening þyrs
The idea that eoten and ent could constitute “an alliterating trope” is intriguing, and given my recent posts on the subject you may (correctly) suppose that I would very much like it to be true. This post, then, will be an exploration of the idea of alliterating pairs of terms, how such tropes work, and whether we can find any evidence (or, lacking evidence, reason) to support such pairing for eoten and ent.
Pairs of words (alliterating or not) are found commonly in modern English, where they sometimes form a merism: a set of terms that together represent the totality of a higher-order concept. Wikipedia offers a useful everyday example: to search high and low means to search everywhere.
Or, take the slightly more obscure merism, kith and kin (all three words of which, incidentally, go back to Old English). Proof of the power of alliteration to reinforce, or indeed to shape, meaning can be seen in the fact that most speakers today, if asked what the expression means, would venture “friends and family”. Close: but kith, at least in the form of Old English cyðe/cuðe, speaks more to familiarity than friendship. It originally referenced something that was known, such as one’s homeland, and by extension could refer to acquaintances, neighbors, or friends and relatives. Friends and family is more immediately recognizable to modern speakers. But kith and kin survived thanks to the alliteration and assonance that make it a memorable and efficient figure.
Merisms can sometimes seem redundant, as in the above example, where “kith” betrays some semantic overlap with the concept of “kin”. However, merisms are designed such that both terms, taken together, offer complementary reference to a larger concept. If we go looking for a merism involving entas and eotenas, then, at the outset we are implicitly assuming that the two terms are not synonymous but are in our sources meaningfully distinct (a position I have discussed in previous posts).
So, can we find evidence for eoten and ent constituting a merism?
Forms of ent and eoten occur more frequently in Beowulf than in any other Old English text. Forms of ent can be found in four instances: three constituting variants of enta geweorc “the work of ents” (ll. 1679, 2717, 2774) and one example of entiscne “entish” (l. 2979). Forms of eoten occur eight times, referring to giant monsters in general (ll. 112, 421, 883) or Grendel in particular (ll. 668, 761), or in the expression ealdsweord eotonisc (ll. 1558, 2616, 2979).2
In none of these instances are entas and eotenas used together to signify the entirety of a higher-order group. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Could we imagine a merism or other trope involving multiple giant-types? Yes – and in fact, Jacob Grimm saw one dealing not with entas but with the þyrs. In Teutonic Mythology (Vol. 2, pg. 520), he observed an instance where
both iotnar and hrimþursar are summoned one after the other, so there must be some nice distinction between the two.
He found that nice distinction in what he saw as the etymology of the terms, with iotunn linked to eating, while
þaurs, þurs, durs signify either fond of wine, thirsty, or drunken, a meaning which makes a perfect pair with that we fished out of itans, iotunn. The two words for giant express an inordinate desire for eating and drinking, precisely what exhibits itself in the Homeric cyclop. Heracles too is described as edax and bibax, e.g. in Euripides’s Alcestis; and the ON giant Suttungr apparently stands for Suptungr, where we must presuppose a noun supt = sopi, a sup or draught. (p. 522)
Grimm’s etymology is not uncontested, but we can at least see how two giant-terms may have been fitted together, each expressing a different aspect of monstrous behavior.
One place in Beowulf where we might look for such a figure – a place where the poet might want to use a pair of distinct monster-terms in order to evoke the entirety of some larger group of monsters – is fairly early in the poem, where the poet discusses the origins of Grendel. Several monsters are mentioned, including the eotenas, but there is not an ent in sight:
Þanon untydras ealle onwocon,eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas,swylce gigantas, þa wið Gode wunnonlange þrage; he him ðæs lean forgeald.-ll. 111-14
From him [i.e., Cain] arose all evil broods,
ettens and elves and hell-corpses,also giants, who struggled with Goda great while; He paid them back.
When Beowulf stands before Hrothgar and offers his monster-slaying credentials, here too, we might imagine, would be an excellent place to use both terms eoten and ent to bring in an alliterating trope of giants. Something like:
*From eoten to ent all enemies fear me
Alas, as earlier, the eotenas are mentioned, but no entas:
þær ic fife geband,yðde eotena cyn.-ll. 420-21
where I bound five,Destroyed eotens’ kin.
Beowulf is the only OE text in which both entas and eotenas appear. Line 2979, which Mees cited above as suggestive of an alliterative trope, is the closest these two terms come, and in an earlier post I have speculated about what this instance might say about the connotations of each. But whatever we may think of their usage here, it is the only occasion where the words alliterate together. We know the Beowulf-poet was capable of using formulas or tropes involving entas and eotenas; but whatever the reason, he did not otherwise relate these two terms.
One explanation for the lack of an ent/eoten merism could be that entas were simply not seen as similar enough in category to fit with the eoten. “Goods” and “chattels” both represent types of property; “kith” and “kin” represent types of people. But it perhaps would stretch the meanings of the terms to say that “entas” and “eotenas” represent types of monsters. Entas, that is, are too human (or, perhaps, not monstrous enough) to be paired with the eotenas. Certainly by the late Anglo-Saxon period, ent was being used to refer to giants with obvious (or predominantly) human or semidivine ancestry: Goliath, Hercules, Nimrod. Ent could even describe pagan gods: Aelfric says idol-worshipping pagans “believed in dead entas”.3 Entas were responsible for the Roman-style roads and pillars in Andreas, and the Roman-style buildings in The Ruin. The so-called Last Survivor in Beowulf is presented as a man; yet when he deposits his peoples’ treasure in the soon-to-be-dragon-haunted barrow – a barrow which must have been built by his evidently human predecessors – the entire complex is called an enta geweorc by the poet, twice (or possibly once, with the other reference being to the treasure within).

The entas had their monstrous side, to be sure. The same Aelfric who called the builders of Babel both entas and men could also refer to the giants of Genesis 6:4 as entas: the half-human, half-divine offspring of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men”. Possibly the most monstrous vision of entas is provided in a gloss on Aldhelm’s Latin riddle on creation, where, for the poem’s ciclopum the glossator supplies enta.
Still, the entas are by far the most “human” of the Old English giants. Goliath, for example, is never called an eoten; nor is eoten ever used to refer to the Biblical (therefore at least partly human) giants. In Beowulf, the eotenas are presented as monsters for heroes to kill. Grendel is a eoten with human ancestry, but he is presented as a ghastly mirror-image of humanity degenerated by sin, with his few human trappings (such as his dragon-hide bag into which he stuffs his victims) a far cry from the proud, if pagan, works of the entas.
Of course, the existing corpus of OE poetry is not exhaustive. Possibly in an earlier period, ent could have paired with eoten more frequently than our single example in Beowulf suggests. Mees’s suggestion that the “new” term ent developed via a “West Saxon (re)interpretation” is, I think, instructive. For if ent, during the age of Alfred, was coming to acquire a set of Biblical and Classical connotations, that could explain why we do not see the term as part of an alliterating trope involving eotenas. That reimagination of the entas wrested them, to an extent, from the Northern context: in the works of writers like the redactor of Orosius, like Aelfric, like Wulfstan, the entas were moved from the forests of the North to the shores of the Mediterranean. There, Cynewulf could imagine even Rome itself as a burg enta; there the Andreas-poet could see his Mermedonia (somewhere near the Black Sea or the Aegean – anyway, somewhere far away south and east) rotting and tottering upon the ruins of enta geweorc, ripe for a cleansing flood. And later, even farther away, in miles and in history, Aelfric could plant the entas near the very origins of the great, cosmic story of salvation history, and in so doing could confirm what even the pagan Anglo-Saxons had long understood: that the entas were here, had been here, almost from the very beginning, the proof of their presence in the Babelian jumble of wonder-work all about us.
Look on their works (Aelfric might have thought), you humble, and rejoice.
Mees, Bernard. “Of Ettins and Ents.” English Studies, 96:6, 611-618. 2015
I am excluding from this count forms of eotena that are interpreted as references to Jutes rather than monsters. Old English quotes here and throughout are from Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th edition.
“Passio Apostolorum Petri et Pauli”