Anglo-Norman words

In an Anglo-Norman prose lapidary from the second half of the thirteenth century – a study of the medical ‘powers’ of different stones and minerals, claiming to derive its knowledge from a letter which  the mysterious Arabian king Evax  wrote  to Emperor Tiberius – we find the following recommendation: “La rousse [celidoine] est bone a houme qui chiet de passion et a home lunage”  Lapid  149.xxvi.7 (“The red [chelidonius] (=a small stone taken from the gizzard of a swallow) is good for someone who suffers epilepsy and for a ‘lunatic’ person”) Leaving aside the question of how effective the use of a piece of red chelidonius would have been in these matters, we would like to concentrate on the word lunage . The adjective derives from lune  (Latin luna : ‘moon’), followed by the (normally substantival) suffix - age , and is the Anglo-Norman equivalent to Latin lunaticus . This particular word formation is no longer extant in Modern French ...

At this time of year, our thoughts turn to Christmas foods – particularly to sweets and confections. A search of the use of the term ‘sweetmeat’ in the AND2 (one can search the translations or glosses in the dictionary from the homepage) shows that an international array of sugary goods was available in medieval England. For those unfamiliar with the English term, sweetmeat is used to describe any kind of confectionary – candied fruit, nuts etc. – nothing ‘meaty’ involved despite the name – ‘meat’ is used here in the original sense of ‘food’ and not ‘flesh’. This should not be confused with the similar sounding sweetbread – which is definitely neither sweet nor bread! Even the OED can’t explain that one! Confection was the general term used in Anglo-Norman for any compound preparation – a mixture which included a number of ingredients. It was also used as a term for preserves, a mixture of fruit and sugar. From the Latin confectio , the word is attested in Middle English ...

The Nativity in the Bedford Hours: London, British Library, MS Additional 18850, f. 65r. - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/12/a-royal-gift-for-christmas.html#sthash.0F4dY9c5.dpuf It may be a little early for Noel , but already offer you a present in the shape of a novel version of the dictionary: we have proceeded not only with the online publication of the second edition of the letter N – from naal to nuus – but also with the introduction of some entirely new functionalities. Work on the letter N in the course of 2013 coincided with a novation (‘the alteration of a contract to include a new person’), that is the inclusion of Katariina Nära to the project team. She has been working, since April, on the addition of a new feature now part of AND#2: an entirely new section at the top of the article (just below the headword and variant forms) provides live links and/or references to other relevant dictionaries. These wi...

Pending online publication of the second edition of ‘N’, AND revision work continues with the editorial team currently gathering information, citations and references for the letter ‘O’.  To offer a glimpse of the process: it has already become apparent that while AND#1 only had one entry for organe , AND#2 (the second, online edition) will have (at least) two: one musical and one herbal. The first entry (which was already present in AND#1), now becoming organe 1 , is derived from Latin organum. The word can be traced back to Greek οργανον, which originally referred to a tool or instrument to work with (cf. εργον, Greek for ‘work, task’), and more specifically to a musical instrument. That latter meaning persisted in medieval times, and the DMLBS lists as its 5 th sense: ‘musical instrument that can be tuned’ (DMLBS 2053a). Whereas the modern musical sense of ‘organ’, i.e. an instrument using pipes sounded by keys, is already well-attested in medieval Latin organum ...

While gathering information for the revision of the AND, one of the sources available to the editorial team is the collection of ‘gleanings’ previously made by contributors. Certain texts were read completely and any number of noteworthy words, phrases or citations were set aside – in earlier days handwritten on slips or on typed lists, but more recently copied in digital files – for later consideration. Sometime in the late 1990s Dr. Lisa Jefferson contributed in such a way, and gathered material from (among other sources) the manuscripts of the Merchant Taylor accounts – which otherwise would not have been available to the AND. Her ‘gleanings’ for ‘H’ from these documents belonging the London guild of tailors included the following intriguing phrase: ‘Item pur .vij. havegooddays , un pur le stretdore, pris .iiij. d. et pur l’autres .vj. d. – xij d.’ It is a single entry in a list of payments made during the second year of the reign of Henry VI (1423). Two seemin...

Call for Papers: Anglo-Norman Texts, Language and Contexts The Anglo-Norman Dictionary ( www.anglo-norman.net ) is interested in sponsoring a session or series of sessions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2014 (see  http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/ )  devoted to new research on Anglo-Norman texts a nd their contexts. We will present papers on the subject, but are looking for further contributors. We are particularly interested in hearing about new texts, new editions of texts, and texts that fall outside of the literary context. Paper topics could include, but are not limited to: the use of Anglo-Norman in literary and non-literary contexts the intended audience of Anglo-Norman texts throughout the medieval period the transmission of Anglo-Norman texts the revision, annotation or translation of Anglo-Norman texts  the inclusion of Anglo-Norman with texts in other languages the manuscript context of Anglo-Norman works the use of Anglo-Norman outsid...