Medieval Cookery - Middle-English Word of the Day

Middle-English Word of the Day - April 24, 2008

Sophymes (n.) - subtleties.

Ne koude man, by twenty thousand part,
Countrefete the sophymes of his art,
Ne were worthy unbokelen his galoche,
Ther doublenesse or feynyng sholde approche,
Ne so koude thonke a wight as he dide me!

- Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury tales (1387-1394)

Pronunciation: /sOfim@s/

Key
/s/ s in hiss
/O/ o in cloth
/f/ f in fifty
/i/ i in machine
/m/ m in make
/@/ 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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