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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
Megan Poinski, Forbes, 4 Mar. 2025
The bill is the latest twist in the nearly decade-long saga of ethnic studies in California, which has become a lightning rod for culture war arguments about diversity, history and racial identity -- especially during the Israel-Gaza war that erupted in October 2023.
—Molly Gibbs and Grant Stringer Bay Area News Group (tns), arkansasonline.com, 3 Mar. 2025
There is a fresh twist in a California family’s saga of trying to reclaim ownership of a Camille Pissarro painting that a relative had relinquished to the Nazis in return for safe passage out of Germany in 1939.
—Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2025
More top sports stories: Column: President Donald Trump inserts himself into the Pete Rose saga — ripping baseball as ‘dying’
Notre Dame ended the regular season with a meltdown.
—Chicago Tribune, 3 Mar. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Saga.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/saga. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
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saga
noun
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