The notion of the formula focuses attention on shared language which repeats across the corpus of Old English verse. As half-line units, formulas have a strong metrical component. The aspect of Old English poetic style which is referred to as verbal repetition, in contrast, focuses attention on the repetition of words within individual poems – both within discrete passages and across entire poems. Such repetitions of words and phrases do not necessarily entail the repetition of a rhythmic pattern. Verbal repetition and formulas do, however, overlap. On the simplest level, this overlap can be as a result of a word, which recurs in a poem, appearing, on occasion, within a formula, and thus tying a formula into a larger scheme of verbal repetition throughout a poem. On a more conceptual level, there is the strict oralformulaic view that a half-line which is repeated for stylistic, rather than utilitarian, reasons is not a formula but a verbal repetition. Formulas which repeat verbatim within a poem will be of interest in this chapter, as they were in the previous chapter. On an aesthetic level too, formulas and verbal repetition are closely related features of Old English verse; they are both rooted in an aesthetics which takes pleasure in the familiar and which creates familiarity by repetition.

Verbal repetition is a prominent feature of the style of Old English poetry, with virtually all Old English poems being marked by what are, to modern sensibilities, frequent and dense repetitions of lexis.