ethelred

1. 1.

   king of the English who succeeded to the throne after his half-brother Edward the Martyr was murdered; he struggled unsuccessfully against the invading Danes (969-1016)

   SynonymsEthelred IIEthelred the Unready

   Broaderking
2. 2.

   king of Wessex and Kent and elder brother of Alfred; Alfred joined Ethelred's battle against the invading Danes and succeeded him on his death (died in 871)

   SynonymsEthelred I

   Broaderking

Other forms of ethelred

plural

ethelreds·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ethelred

What does ethelred mean?

ethelred means "king of the English who succeeded to the throne after his half-brother Edward the Martyr was murdered; he struggled unsuccessfully against the invading Danes (969-1016)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ethelred?

ethelred has 2 syllables: ethel-red. The stress falls on "ethel".

What is another word for ethelred?

Close synonyms include Ethelred II, Ethelred the Unready, Ethelred I. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ethelred a common word?

ethelred is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.