Middle English Dictionary

[Bleddyn De Caldicot]

Can anyone recommend an English to Middle English dictionary?

[Karen Larsdatter]

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/

[Bleddyn De Caldicot]

I've been using that for what I'm doing so far but a lot of words won't come up. Could this be that they are the same in modern English as in middle English (words like Battle)? Also a lot of the words have many spellings and I was wondering if it matters which spelling is used?

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Ironically the MED search can be difficult to search because of the varient spellings.

You'll notice when you use the search you can search for headwords or headwords and forms. You will pretty much always use the second.
For going from Modern English to words that mean something in Middlle english use the search instead of lookup and set it to definition.

[Karen Larsdatter]

Middle English doesn't really have a standard orthography -- there's regional variations, there's a couple hundred years of changes -- so it kind of depends on what era you're trying to evoke.

I usually go to http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/structure.html and type the word I'm looking for, and then I specify that I want to find that in the definition. So, "battle," for example, tells me that the closest word is probably batail(le), but there's also barat(e) and a couple of other options, depending on the sort of context.

[Bleddyn De Caldicot]

Thank you so much for that option Karen! This will greatly improve the way it looks!

If I wanted to make something like baitale plural would an S at the end work?

and lastly, what does the bracket indicate in a word like this "corun(e" ?

[Karen Larsdatter]

If I wanted to make something like baitale plural would an S at the end work?

Usually, yep. In this case, you could check out the quotations:

• Whethir that werres and batailes meintenyng ... ben laufulle according to justice or no. (The Book of Noblenesse)
• That no man take no batayles in a wrongefull quarell. (Mallory's Works)
• At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene. (Canterbury Tales General Prologue)
• Mars ... doth mervailes Upon the fortune of batailes. (Confessio Amantis)
• Þanne busked þei here batayles on þe best wise. (William of Palerne)
• Þe trompe ... is som tyme y blowe to arraye batayles and som tyme for batayles schulde smyte togidres. (De Proprietatibus Rerum)
• Þe world may yhit ... Be lykend ... To a feld ful of batailles Of enemys. (Prick of Conscience)
• Foure batels they gan make..and forth they gon, The foure gates for to assaile. (Romance of the Rose)
• Than thir twa batalles met Samen & faughte to-gedir. (The Prose Alexander)

Etc. and so forth. There are several other examples on the page, but they're all showing the plural form of batail(le) as batail(le)s.

and lastly, what does the bracket indicate in a word like this "corun(e" ?

It means that sometimes it appears as corun and sometimes it appears as corune. (If you're writing a poem, the variant choice can change the meter.)

For coroun(e), for example, there's a LOT of different spellings shown in the quotations: corone, coroun, coroune, corowne, crone, croun, croune, crovn, crown, crowne, crune, curune, and krowne.

Also, coronan, corones, coronys, corounes, crovnes, crounes, crownes, crownys, cruness for plural forms in different contexts.