Christmas 2015: Anglo-Norman words overview

2015 has been a turbulent year for the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, with the unfortunate illness and extremely sad passing away of our General Editor, Prof. David Trotter, last August.

Looking forward to a more positive 2016, the current AND team, Dr. Heather Pagan and Dr. Geert De Wilde, would like to wish our readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Ranworth Antiphoner, fol 22, fifteenth century)

We will be back in January with new Anglo-Norman words of the month, but in the meantime, here’s an overview of all the vocabulary we have discussed on this blog so far, in the past 2 or 3 years. There might be one or two you’d missed?

‘alphabet’/’abc’ - link

‘nick’, nock’ and ‘notch’ - link

The ‘Croes Naid’ - link

‘nuncheon’ - link

‘monoceros’ and ‘unicorn’ - link

‘havegooday’ - link

‘organe’ - link

‘noef’ and ‘novel’ - link

Anglo-Norman sweetmeats - link

‘lunage’, ‘lunetus’ and ‘lunatic’ - link

‘locust’ and ‘lobster’ - link

‘ongler’ - link

‘quyne’ the ‘evil monkey’ - link

‘herds’, ‘bevies’ and ‘sounders’ - link

‘ombre’ - link

‘outremer’ - link

‘nice’, an Anglo-Norman insult - link

Anglo-Norman chess terminology - link

‘gagging, ‘queasy’ and ‘squeamish’ - link

‘fitonesse’ -link

‘pedigree’, ‘pé de colum’ and ‘péage’ - link

‘fitchews’ and ‘mitching’ - link

‘pie’ and ‘pastry’ - link

‘penthouse’ - link

‘giggling’, ‘jigg(l)ing’ ‘gigolo’ - link

‘parker’, ‘paliser’ and ‘parchementer’, Anglo-Norman surnames - link

The Anglo-Norman horse (part 1) - link

‘predire’ and ‘prediction’ - link

The Anglo-Norman horse (part 2): horsemanship - link

‘lit’ and the Anglo-Norman bed - link

After the festive break, work will continue on the revision of P-, which we hope to publish online by the end of 2016.

[gdw/hp]

Comments

Word of the month: Nice! An Anglo-Norman insult.

English speakers may be surprised to learn that the etymology of nice is not very nice at all and that its semantic development is unparalleled in the Romance languages. This word, which style guides recommend that you avoid as it both ubiquitous and nearly devoid of all meaning, has a most complicated semantic evolution. The word nice is attested quite early in French – ca 1160 and has its roots in the Latin nescius , an adjective meaning ‘ignorant, unknowing’. [1] The word was used in French (and other Romance languages) in Middle English (c. 1400) to disparage people, actions and sayings as silly or foolish. This is the meaning the word retained in the Romance languages, though in French the word is rather uncommon today though you may find it in some older texts to refer to someone as simple or naive, such as those the TLF cites: Un brave homme, un peu nice, appelé Monthyon ( Pommier, Colères, 1844 , p.66) The semantic development of the word nice in English...

Word of the month: nuncheon

It is mid-afternoon and the editorial team of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary is producing XML files of the latest batch of new entries for N-. They have been sitting in front of their computers and processing the data for about six hours now, and their typing fingers are noticeably slowing down. It is still too early to call it a day, but minds are inevitably beginning to wander. Fortunately, a resolution for the growing three-o’clock malaise is found in the Oxford English Dictionary under the word ‘ nuncheon ’, that is, ‘a drink taken in the afternoon; a light refreshment between meals; a snack’. ‘Nuncheon’ is a word labelled as archaic or regional – the sort of vocabulary encountered in nineteenth-century novels: Sir Walter Scott still wrote ‘I came to get my four-hours’ nunchion from you’ in his novel Fortunes Of Nigel (1822), and in Charlotte Mary Yonge’s Love and Life (1880) a sister tells her siblings ‘I will give you some bread and cheese and gingerbread for noonchin ’. ...

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