Medieval Cookery - Middle-English Word of the Day

Middle-English Word of the Day - January 3, 2008

Resalgar (n.) - realgar, red orpiment, arsenic.

Sal tartre, alkaly, and sal preparat,
And combust materes and coagulat;
Cley maad with hors of mannes heer, and oille
Of tartre, alum glas, berme, wort, and argoille,
Resalgar, and oure materes enbibyng,
And eek of oure materes encorporyng,

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

Pronunciation: /rEsAlgAr/

Key
/r/ r in red
/E/ e in met
/s/ s in hiss
/A/ a in father
/l/ l in lily
/g/ g in go

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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