Middle-English Word of the Day - December 21, 2007
Swarde (n.) - covering, skin, turfy surface, surface of the earth.
The soft sowch of the swyr and soune of the stremys,
The sueit savour of the sward and singing of foulis,
Myght confort ony creatur of the kyn of Adam,
And kindill agane his curage, thocht it wer cald sloknyt.
- Dunbar, William: The tretis of the twa mariit women and the wedo (1508)
Pronunciation: /swArd@/
Key
/s/ s in hiss
/w/ w in we, away
/A/ a in father
/r/ r in red
/d/ d in dog
/@/ 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/
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