Anglo-Norman words

Writing a dictionary is a never-ending process. As editors we are constantly moving forward through the dictionary, revising the original entries and adding new ones, currently for the letters P and Q. However, new research, new editions and new perspectives can cause us to return to earlier, completed entries and rethink them. As last month’s entry showed, the addition of semantic tags prompted some rewriting of entries so that overlapping semantic fields can be made more evident and more easily searched through the tagging system. A similar rewriting process has been inspired by incorporation of links to other dictionaries, which can highlight words that don’t belong to the etymon once believed. The original entry for gagé (not present in the first print edition, but added in the online second edition, in 2005) defined estre gagé de as ‘to be inclined to refuse to’. This was illustrated by a single citation: E pur enducer le beyre, metés un poy de sucre ou licoris pur se...

As an online resource, the AND is constantly  evolving. Not only are we in the process of producing a much-expanded new edition of the dictionary itself ( headwords starting with P/Q are our current focus), we also continue to expand the already revised A-O section, adding citations, senses and even entries whenever we come across new material. A word you looked up and couldn’t find yesterday might be in there today! In addition to this work, we have been designing new features and search facilities for the site. For example, over the last year and a half, we have been providing each and every AND entry with cross-references to other relevant dictionaries of French, English and Latin (so far this is available for entries beginning with G-O – that is about 7500 entries). [1] At the same time, we are also developing a new and searchable semantic tagging system. What this is and how it would serve the user, this blog-post will briefly explain and illustrate. The so-called ‘s...

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...

Outre-mer (see TLF ) is a French term that can be used to refer to faraway countries, be it in Africa, the Orient or America. It is a direct translation of the Latin ultra mare , literally ‘across the sea’, which in its adjectival form ultramarinus (cf. DMLBS 3545a), also produced the English word ultramarine : the blue pigment derived from the mineral lapis lazuli which, in medieval times, was imported from Asia by sea. Within a medieval context, Outremer also became a word used to refer to the Crusaders’ Holy Land and more specifically to the French settlements in the conquered territories of the Near or Middle East: the lands ‘across the sea’. It is mainly with that latter sense that outremer was used in English (OED Outremer n. ), albeit only from the first half of the nineteenth century, when it makes its first attested appearance, rather surprisingly, in the Longfellow’s travel book Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea : ‘I, too, in a certain sense, have been a pilgrim...