Geoffrey Chaucer

“ Cm.; and 'ihc' in Cp. Pt. Ln.; in both cases there is a stroke through the h. This is frequently printed Ihesu, but the retention of h is unnecessary. It is not really an h at all, but the Greek Η, meaning long e (ē) . So, also, in 'ihc,' the c is not the Latin c, but the Gk. C, meaning Σ or s; and ihc are the first three letters of the word ΙΗΣΟΥΣ = ιησους = iesus. Iesu, as well as Iesus, was used as a nominative, though really the genitive or vocative case. At a later period, ihs (still with a stroke through the h) was written for ihc as a contraction of iesus. ”

“ Thou is used with singular verbs, and the possessive pronoun thine; but ye requires plural verbs, and the possessive your.'—Pref. to Will. of Palerne, ed. Skeat, p. xlii. Cf. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, sect. 231.
1678. Asie, Asia; probably used, as Tyrwhitt suggests, in the sense of Asia Minor, as in the Acts of the Apostles.
1679. a Iewerye, a Jewry, i. e. a Jews' quarter. In many towns there was formerly a Jews' quarter, distinguished by a special name. There is still an Old Jewry in London. In John vii. ”

“ Examples of leue in Chaucer are (1) in the present passage, misprinted lene by Tyrwhitt, Morris, Wright, and Bell, though five of our MSS. have leue; (2) in the Freres Tale, D. 1644, printed lene by Tyrwhitt (l. 7226) , leene by Morris, leeve by Wright and Bell; (3) (4) (5) in three passages in Troilus and Criseyde (ii. 1212, iii. 56, v. 1750) , where Tyrwhitt prints leve, but unluckily recants his opinion in his Glossary, whilst Morris prints lene. For other examples see Stratmann, s. v. lænan and leven. ”

“ It may be remarked that leve in Old English has several other senses; such as (1) to believe; (2) to live; (3) to leave; (4) to remain; (5) leave, sb.; (6) dear, adj. I give an example in which the first, sixth, and third of these senses occur in one and the same line:—
'What! leuestow, leue lemman, that i the [thee] leue wold?'
⁠Will. of Palerne, 2358.
1874. Hugh of Lincoln. The story of Hugh of Lincoln, a boy supposed to have been murdered at Lincoln by the Jews, is placed by Matthew Paris under the year 1255. ”

“ See Mätzner, Englische Grammatik, ii. 2. 313. men used, people used; equivalent to was used. Note this use of men in the same sense as the French on, or German man. This is an excellent instance, as the poet does not refer to men at all, but to children. Moreover, men (spelt me in note to B. 1702) is an attenuated form of the sing. man, and not the usual plural.
1693. clergeon, not 'a young clerk' merely, as Tyrwhitt says, but a happily chosen word implying that he was a chorister as well. ”

“ Hl. has felonye, wrongly. In the margin of the Ellesmere MS. is written 'turpe lucrum,' i. e. vile gain, which is evidently the sense intended by lucre of vilanye, here put for villanous lucre or filthy lucre, by poetical freedom of diction. See Chaucer's use of vilanye in the Prologue, A. 70 and A. 726.
1684. free, unobstructed. People could ride and walk through, there being no barriers against horses, and no termination in a cul de sac. Cf. Troilus, ii. 616-8.
1687. Children an heep, a heap or great number of children. Of is omitted before children as it is before quad yere in B. 1628. ”

“ There is no necessity to alter the reading to than, as proposed by Tyrwhitt. See Mätzner, Engl. Gram. ii. 2. 346, who refers to Luke ii. 41, John i. 44, and quotes an apt passage from Maundeville's Travels, p. 63—'Now aftre that men han visited the holy places, thanne will they turnen toward Jerusalem.' In A. S. the word used in similar cases is sōþlīce = soothly, verily.
1873. Ther, where. leve, grant. No two words have been more confused by editors than lene and leue. Though sometimes written much alike in MSS., they are easily distinguished by a little care. ”

“ Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 284.
1659. 'That, through thy humility, didst draw down from the Deity the Spirit that alighted in thee.'
1660. thalighte = thee alighte, the two words being run into one. Such agglutination is more common when the def. art. occurs, or with the word to; cf. Texpounden in B. 1716.
1661. lighte may mean either (1) cheered, lightened; or (2) illuminated. Tyrwhitt and Richardson both take the latter view ”

“ Thynne, in his Animadversions upon Speght's editions of Chaucer (p. 45 of the reprint of the E.E.T.S.) , addresses Speght as follows—'You saye, that in the 29 Henry iii. eightene Jewes were broughte from Lincolne, and hanged for crucyfyinge a childe of eight yeres olde. Whiche facte was in the 39 Hen. iii., so that you mighte verye well haue sayed, that the same childe of eighte yeres olde was the same hughe of Lincolne; of whiche name there were twoe, viz. thys younger Seinte Hughe, and Seinte Hughe bishoppe of Lincolne, which dyed in the yere 1200, long before this little seinte hughe. ”

“ But it is unnecessary to correct the Host's Latin.
1626. 'Now long mayest thou sail along the coast!'
1627. marineer, Fr. marinier; we now use the ending -er; but modern words of French origin shew their lateness by the accent on the last syllable, as engineer.—M. The Fr. pionnier is pioner in Shakespeare, but is now pioneer.
1628. 'God give this monk a thousand cart-loads of bad years!' He alludes to the deceitful monk described in the Shipman's Tale. A last is a very heavy load. In a Statute of 31 Edw. I. a weight is declared to be 14 stone; 2 weights of wool are to make a sack ”