Excerpt from A Middle-English Dictionary: Containing Words Used by English Writers From the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century<br><br>English, their antecedents in old-english, and their cognates in other languages, Such explanations of meanings as were given were merely sub sidiary to this object. Not infrequently, indeed, words (and those not merely compounds or obvious derivatives) were left without interpretation altogether; in other cases the sense was indicated only by Latin words, which were often themselves ambiguous. Where a middle-english word was glossed by a modem-english one, the latter was commonly the etymological equivalent, even though the word might have undergone a complete change of meaning. In a very large number of instances the only vernacular gloss is an obsolete or dialectal word taken from Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,' or some similar source, and quite unintelligible to ordinary English readers. The following examples will illustrate the author's method -ohe.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.