Anglo-Norman words

One of the other changes in the dictionary entries that users might notice, aside from the new usage tags and the addition of references to cognate words in other dictionaries, involves the content of the entries. The addition that is likely to interest a wide variety of users is that we are beginning to note the use of certain terms as surnames, where we have attestations of such a use. ( Bede roll of the Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1349-50), Parker Library) The inclusion of surnames in dictionaries is not without difficulties. As we mentioned earlier this year in our discussion of the words  pastry/pie , often the language of surnames is problematic: names frequently occur in lists which may follow a bilingual or trilingual text. How then to determine the language of the name? In general, we try to err on the side of inclusion, as frequently surnames attest to Anglo-Norman (as well as Middle English and Latin) words far earlier than they appear in literary or a...

The starting-point for this investigation is on the one hand the Anglo-Norman gigeler , attested only in one text, William of Waddington’s Manuel des péchez , a didactic and moralising treatise from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The verb gigeler , “to frolic”, is generally treated in the dictionaries as a derivative of the relatively well-attested giguer , itself apparently based on gigue , “a stringed musical instrument, smaller than a viol”, ultimately from Old High German gîga (modern German Geige ; cf. FEW gîga , 16,35b). There is some (literary) evidence that the instrument came to France from Germany. Giguer itself, perhaps surprisingly, does not appear to be attested in Anglo-Norman, but the musical instrument gigue and gigur (the player thereof) both are; both, too, are borrowed into medieval English (MED ğige n.2 ; ğigŏur n. ). (OED’s gigue , the musical composition, is not attested until 1685 and as the pronunciation reveals, is a later French borrowing.)...

Some Modern English words have a linguistic history that is straightforward to follow: formally, they have a transparent etymology, and semantically, they have a sense that has more or less remained the same throughout the centuries. Many words, though, take unexpected turns: some revert to very different spellings, twist their forms, and/or acquire new connotations or even meanings. The result is that for such words the root, or etymon, may turn up in quite unexpected places. One clear example of the latter – of a word ‘hiding’ its etymological and semantic origin – turned up during the current revision of AND of words beginning with P-: penthouse . The Modern English word penthouse is defined in the OED (third edition, updated in 2005) as ‘a flat, apartment, suite of rooms, etc., occupying the top floor or floors of a tall building’, with the addition that the word usually has ‘connotations of wealth, status, etc., typically suggesting a luxuriously appointed apartment offering...

Who doesn’t love pie? The love of meat pies, or pasties, dates back to the Middle Ages – the OED notes that the earliest use of the word pasty  dates from 1296, first used as a surname. Do you think Adam Pastey was so named because he made pasties or because he loved to eat them? Image from the 15th century chronicle of Ulrico de Richental The OED suggests that the word pasty came from the Anglo-Norman word paste . Paste derives from the Latin pasta [FEW 7,744a; DMBLS 2138b pasta] and is used for dough, as well as things that are pasty, like glue, mush for animals or medicinal pastes. [1] Amid these senses, the idea of ‘meat pie’ stood out like a sore thumb. We decided to have a closer look at the citations currently defined in the AND as ‘pie’: poucyns, musserons, estornelx, roitelx, pestiez en graunde pastez Man Lang ants 7.21 ( chicks, sparrows, starlings, wrens, baked in big pies ) Et qe nulle pestour qi fait payn tourt vend sa flour as keus pur p...

Despite what is often thought, Anglo-Norman’s influence on English extends well beyond the domains of the court, the law, and towns, with an interesting number of modern English dialect words ultimately being traceable back to the language of the Norman invaders. Two such are fitchew (“a foumart, polecat”, Mustela putorius ), which the 1896 article in the OED derives from “OF fissel ”, and mitch v., tentatively associated in the same dictionary with Anglo-Norman mucier (AND’s muscer ): “Apparently < Anglo-Norman muscer , muscier , mucer , mucier , muscher and Old French mucier , (chiefly Picardy and north-east.) muchier to hide, conceal (oneself)” ( OED article from 2002). Both words, now, are regional. Mitch is so designated in the OED (“regional”) and the sense which concerns us here (“to absent oneself without authority; ( esp. ) to play truant from school” is described (rather imprecisely) as “now Brit. regional and Irish English ”. Fitchew is not labelled as reg...