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PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

SOME seven centuries ago, two distinct languages were spokes throughout England, the Anglo-Saxon, which was that of our Teutonic forefathers, and consequently one of the pure Teutonic dialects, and the Anglo-Norman, one of the Neo-Latin family of tongues, which was brought in by the Norman conquest. For some time, these two languages remained perfectly distinct, the Anglo-Norman being the only one spoken or understood by the higher classes of society; while the lower classes, and a great portion of the intermediate class, used only the Anglo-Saxon. Some only of the middle classes, more especially those engaged in mercantile occupations, were acquainted with both. It was not until the thirteenth century, when the intercourse between the several classes had become more intimate, that an intermixture of the two languages began to take place, and then all the educated classes appear to have been well acquainted with both tongues. From this time forwards, an English writer, though using the Anglo-Saxou tongue, adopted just as many Anglo-Norman words as he pleased,-in fact it had assumed the character of a language of two ingredients, which might be mixed together in any proportion, from pure Anglo-Norman (pure, as regards the derivation of the words) to nearly pure Anglo-Saxon, according to the class of society for which he wrote. Thus, as late as the middle of the fourteenth century, the language of Piers Ploughman, which was designed for a popular work, contains a remarkably small mixture of Anglo-Norman words, while in the writings of Chaucer, who was essentially a Court poet, the proportion of the AngloNorman to the Anglo-Saxon is very great. Much of this AngloNorman element was afterwards rejected from the English language, but much was retained, and of course a proportional quantity of Anglo

Saxon was displaced by it. In consequence of this unsettled state the English language, the writers of the ages of change and transitio contain a very large number of words belonging to the Anglo-Saxo as well as to the Anglo-Norman, which are no longer contained in th English tongue..

Such was the first process of the formation of the English language The limitation of the Anglo-Norman element seems to have taken place in the fifteenth century, when a considerable portion of the Anglo-Norman words used by previous English writers were rejected from the English language, and were never seen in it again. But a these disappeared, they were succeeded by a new class of intruders The scholastic system of the age of the Reformation, had caused a very extensive cultivation and knowledge of the Latin language, and it is probable that the great mass of the reading public at that time were almost as well acquainted with Latin as with their own mother tongue. In consequence of this universal knowledge of Latin, the writers of the sixteenth century, without any sensible inconvenience, used just as many Latin words as they liked in writing English, merely giving them an English grammatical form. The English language thus became suddenly encumbered with Latin words, until, at the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth, the practice of thus using Latin words was carried to such a degree of pedantic affectation, that it effected its own cure. A popular writer of this period, Samuel Rowlands, in a satirical tract published in 1611, under the title of "The Knave of Clubbs," has the following lines upon this fashion, which had at that date reached its culminating point:

SIGNIEUR WORDE-MONGER, THE APE OF ELOQUENCE.

As on the way I Itenerated,
A Rurall person I Obviated,
Interrogating time's Transitation,
And of the passage Demonstration.
My apprehension did Ingenious scan,
That he was meerely a Simplitian,
So when I saw he was Extravagant,
Unto the obscure vulgar Consonant,
I bad him vanish most Promiscuously,
And not Contaminate my company.

A few of these Latin words have held their place in the language,

but our writers, from the latter part of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, abound in words adopted from the Latin which modern English dictionaries do not recognize.

From these and other causes it happens, that of a very large portion of English literature, one part would be totally unintelligible to the general reader, and the other would present continual difficulties, without a dictionary especially devoted to the obsolete words of our language. It is the object of the volumes now offered to the public, to furnish a compendious and useful work of this kind, which shall contain the obsolete Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman words used by the English writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many of the obsolete Latin words introduced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as words which have been adopted temporarily at various times according to prevailing fashions from other languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, or Dutch, or which belonged to sentiments, manners, customs, habits, and modes, that have existed at particular periods and disappeared.

There is another class of words, forming at least an interesting portion of the English language, and coming especially within the objects of a work of this kind, those of the provincial dialects. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics, or, we may say, the organic differences of dialect, are derived more or less from a diversity of tribe among the Anglo-Saxon settlers in our island; for, as far as our materials allow us to go, we can trace these diversities in AngloSaxon times. As, however, during the middle ages, and, in fact, down to very recent times, the intercommunication between different parts of the country was very imperfect, progress, of whatever kind was by no means uniform throughout the kingdom, and we find in the provincial dialects not only considerable numbers of old AngloSaxon and even Anglo-Norman words, which have not been preserved in the language of refined society, and which, in many cases, as far as regards the Anglo-Saxon, are not even found in the necessarily imperfect vocabulary of the language in its pure state which we are enabled to form from its written monuments; but also numerous words, in general use at a much later period, but which, while they became obsolete in the English language generally, have been preserved orally in particular districts. The number and character of

these words is very remarkable, and instances will be continual found, in the following pages, where a word which is now consider as peculiarly characteristic of the dialect of some remote distri occurs as one in general use among the popular, and especially t dramatic, writers, of the age which followed the Restoration.

Words of this description are a necessary part of a dictionary li the present, and they have been collected with as much care as pos ble. On the other hand, the mere organic differences of dialect, well as the differences of orthography in words as found in differe medieval manuscripts and early printed books, have been insert sparingly, as belonging rather to a Comparative Grammar or to a pl lological treatise, than to a dictionary. In fact, to give this class. variations fully, would be simply to make a dictionary of each par cular dialect, and of each medieval manuscript, and to combine the altogether, which could not be done within any moderate limits, an if done, with regard to the manuscripts especially, the first ne manuscript that turned up would only show its imperfection. It ha therefore, been considered advisable not to insert mere orthographic variations of words, unless where they appeared for some reason other sufficiently important or interesting. There are, moreove certain letters and combinations of letters which are in the old forms of the English language interchangeable, so that we constant find the same word occurring, even in the same manuscript, und two or three different forms, none of which are to be regarded corruptions. To insert all these forms, would be to increase t dictionary twofold or threefold, for the words in which those lette occur, without any proportionate advantage; I have therefore general given the word only under the form in which it occurs mo usually, or which seems most correct; but, to facilitate the referenc I add at the end of this preface list of the more common inte changes of this kind, so that if a word be not found under one form it may be sought for under another.

Various and indeed numerous glossaries have been already pu lished, both of provincial and of Archaic English, but most of the have been special rather than general. We may mention among the the valuable work of Archdeacon Nares, which, however, was d voted only to the writers of a particular period; the extensive unde

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