Middle-English Word of the Day - December 6, 2007
Sely (adj.) - happy, blessed, simple, humble.
Greet was the drede and eek the repentance
Of hem that hadden wrong suspecioun
Upon this sely innocent, custance;
And for this miracle, in conclusioun,
And by custances mediacioun,
The kyng -- and many another in that place --
Converted was, thanked be cristes grace!
- Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury tales (1387-1394)
Pronunciation: /sEli/
Key
/s/ s in hiss
/E/ e in met
/l/ l in lily
/i/ i in machine
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