Middle-English Word of the Day - December 12, 2007
Gleyre (n.) - the white of an egg.
Oure fourneys eek of calcinacioun,
And of watres albificacioun;
Unslekked lym, chalk, and gleyre of an ey,
Poudres diverse, asshes, donge, pisse, and cley,
Cered pokkets, sal peter, vitriole,
And diverse fires maad of wode and cole;
- Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury tales (1387-1394)
Pronunciation: /glaIr@/
Key
/g/ g in go
/l/ l in lily
/aI/ ai in aisle
/r/ r in red
/@/ a in sofa
The Middle-English Word of the Day is selected from Mayhew and Skeat's
"Concise Dictionary of Middle English."
As found on Greg Lindahl's website
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/concise/concise.html
The example text was found at the
Middle English Collection
of the
University of Virginia Library.
http://etext.virginia.edu/collections/languages/english/mideng.browse.html
The approximate pronunciation is determined using Carol Hamill's Middle English Pronunciation Guide
and noted using upon the ASCII-IPA Standard
http://www.island.net/~hamill/medieval/mepronunc.html
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/
The Middle-English Word of the Day is automatically distributed Monday through Friday.
To subscribe, send email to mewd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
© Copyright 2007 Medieval Cookery