Keep in mind that a kenning is a
literary trope, or rhetorical figure of speech, which typically combines two words,
usually hyphenates them, and uses them figuratively to replace a one word noun.
Kennings are most common to old Islandic and Anglo-Saxon
poetry.
Kennings can be humorous or not and are very
similar to puns in that they play on common words using common
words to describe something in a new and different way. To remind you of a few examples
the sun has been written in kennings as: sky's-jewel and
sky-candle. The author of Beowulf described the sea as a
"whale-road."
I'm going to guess that you've been given a
creative assignment here to create your own kennings for the words above (afterall,
"police" and "prom" are far too modern to have likely been used in
a piece of literature employing kennings). While I could personally provide several
ideas for you, I think you would have more fun coming up with the kennings yourself.
Another point to add is that the words you choose in the kenning is going to reflect
your attitude about the original word. An example for this might be the kenning you
design for boyfriend. If you wish to portray a committed relationship (in highschool)
as a positive or whimsical thing you could change boyfriend to "phone-ringer" implying
that he's always calling. However, if this is a negative thing, the same role could be
called a "prison-guard." Do you see where you could actually have a lot of fun with
this?
Also, if the kennings themselves are going to be used
in a poem (written by you), it is not uncommon to create a figure of speech for the
purpose of matching a rhyme. Shakespeare did this all the time.
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