Medieval Cookery - Middle-English Word of the Day

Middle-English Word of the Day - February 5, 2008

Lyre (n.) - the muscle of the thigh, the flank.

And the gome in the grene gered as fyrst,
Bothe the lyre and the leggez, lokkez and berde,
Saue that fayre on his fote he foundez on the erthe,
Sette the stele to the stone, and stalked bysyde.

- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1400)

Pronunciation: /lir@/

Key
/l/ l in lily
/i/ i in machine
/r/ r in red
/@/ 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/

The Middle-English Word of the Day is automatically distributed Monday through Friday.

To subscribe, send email to mewd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.