Produced by Greg Lindahl and PG Distributed Proofreaders, and Anzia Kraus of the CWRU Library

     [ Note from the Project Gutenberg post-processor: 

     This book uses a variety of special characters, some of which are
     easily representable in a text font, some of which are not.

     A deg. (eth) and A3/4/Az (thorn/Thorn) are as-is.  Yough is represented as the
     two-character sequence 3*.

     The special characters A|/A (ae/ae) do not have accented forms in
     the standard text font, so when accented have been written as A|*
     and A*.

     Long marks over Latin vowels have been marked as u*, etc.

End-of-line hyphens present a significant problem in this book, as many different languages are used, some of which hyphenate many words.  For the most part these end-of-line hyphens have been joined; on occasion they are marked as -*.

     Greek words are transliterated using the standard Gutenberg scheme.

     Italics are marked thus, and boldface thus.

     Finally, the “additions and corrections” at the end have been added
     into the main text, marked by [Addition] or [Correction] after the
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[Illustration]

A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF

MIDDLE ENGLISH

MAYHEW AND SKEAT

A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF MIDDLE ENGLISH FROM A.D. 1150 TO 1580

BY THE

REV.  A. L. MAYHEW, M.A.  OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD

AND THE

Rev.  Walter W. Skeat Litt.D.; LL.D.  Edin.; M.A.  Oxon.  ELRINGTON and Bosworth professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge

“These our Ancient Words here set down, I trust will for this time satisfie the Reader.—­R.  VERSTEGAN, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, ch. vii (at the end)

“Authentic words be given, or none!” Wordsworth, Lines on Macpherson’s Ossian

MDCCCLXXXVIII

PREFACE

(By professor Skeat.)

The present work is intended to meet, in some measure, the requirements of those who wish to make some study of Middle-English, and who find a difficulty in obtaining such assistance as will enable them to find out the meanings and etymologies of the words most essential to their purpose.