A Concise Dictionary of Middle English

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A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Concise Dictionary of Middle English
by A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: A Concise Dictionary of Middle English From A.D. 1150 To 1580
Author: A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10625]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by Greg Lindahl and PG Distributed Proofreaders, and Anzia Kraus of the CWRU Library

[ Note from the Project Gutenberg post-processor:
This book uses a variety of special characters, some of which are easily representable in a text font, some of which are not.
?° (eth) and ??/?? (thorn/Thorn) are as-is. Yough is represented as the two-character sequence 3*.
The special characters ?|/?? (ae/AE) do not have accented forms in the standard text font, so when accented have been written as ?|* and ??*.
Long marks over Latin vowels have been marked as u*, etc.
End-of-line hyphens present a significant problem in this book, as many different languages are used, some of which hyphenate many words. For the most part these end-of-line hyphens have been joined; on occasion they are marked as -*.
Greek words are transliterated using the standard Gutenberg scheme.
Italics are marked _thus_, and boldface thus.
Finally, the "additions and corrections" at the end have been added into the main text, marked by [Addition] or [Correction] after the entry.
Images of this book are available at http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/concise/
Corrections are welcome. ]
[Illustration]
A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF
MIDDLE ENGLISH
MAYHEW AND SKEAT A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF MIDDLE ENGLISH FROM A.D. 1150 TO 1580
BY THE
REV. A. L. MAYHEW, M.A. OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD
AND THE
REV. WALTER W. SKEAT LITT.D.; LL.D. EDIN.; M.A. OXON. ELRINGTON AND BOSWORTH PROFESSOR OF ANGLO-SAXON IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
"These our Ancient Words here set down, I trust will for this time satisfie the Reader.--R. VERSTEGAN, _Restitution of Decayed Intelligence_, ch. vii (at the end)
"Authentic words be given, or none!" WORDSWORTH, _Lines on Macpherson's Ossian_
MDCCCLXXXVIII
PREFACE
(BY PROFESSOR SKEAT.)
The present work is intended to meet, in some measure, the requirements of those who wish to make some study of Middle-English, and who find a difficulty in obtaining such assistance as will enable them to find out the meanings and etymologies of the words most essential to their purpose.
The best Middle-English Dictionary, that by Dr. M?¤tzner of Berlin, has only reached the end of the letter H; and it is probable that it will not be completed for many years. The only Middle-English Dictionary that has been carried on to the end of the alphabet is that by the late Dr. Stratmann, of Krefeld. This is a valuable work, and is indispensable for the more advanced student. However, the present work will still supply a deficiency, as it differs from Stratmann's Dictionary in many particulars. We have chosen as our Main Words, where possible, the most typical of the forms or spellings of the period of Chaucer and Piers Plowman; in Stratmann, on the other hand, the form chosen as Main Word is generally the oldest form in which it appears, frequently one of the twelfth century. Moreover, with regard to authorities, we refer in the case of the great majority of our forms to a few, cheap, easily accessible works, whereas Stratmann's authorities are mainly the numerous and expensive publications of the Early English Text Society. Lastly, we have paid special attention to the French element in Middle-English, whereas Stratmann is somewhat deficient in respect of words of French origin [Footnote 1: A new and thoroughly revised edition of Stratmann's Dictionary is being prepared by Mr. Henry Bradley, for the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.] The book which has generally been found of most assistance to the learner is probably Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words; but this is not specially confined to the Middle-English period, and the plan of it differs in several respects from that of the present work.
The scope of this volume will be best understood by an explanation of the circumstances that gave rise to it. Some useful and comparatively inexpensive volumes illustrative of the Middle-English period have been issued by the Clarendon Press; all of which are furnished with glossaries, explaining all the important words, with exact references to the passages wherein the words occur. In particular, the three useful hand-books containing Specimens of English (from 1150 down to 1580) together supply no less than sixty-seven characteristic extracts from the most important literary monuments of this period; and the three glossaries to these books together fill more than 370 pages of closely-printed type in double