Hi, I have a more general question about how to read the dates of the entries. For example, in the entry for “travel”, it says late 14c. and then after the original French it says (1300). What does the 1300 mean?
late 14c., trauel; mid-15c., travell, “make a journey, go from place to place,” from travailen (1300) “make a journey,” originally “to struggle, toil, labor” (see travail (v.)).
Thanks for any help!
Thank you, that’s always a great question, and I’m glad of a chance to post the answer to it.
It probably says “c.1300” as the Old French in the entry you’re reading. A Middle English (or Old French) date is almost never going to be assuredly exact for the text or the word, only for the document.
For Middle English the dates on etymonline are grouped roughly in thirds: mid-14c. would be, using the known dates of the manuscripts, a word from a document dated to 1334 to 1366. Late 14c. and early 14c. would account for the rest of that wretched century.
However, the Middle English sources show many important and extensive publications right around the years 1200 (Layamon’s “Brut”), 1300 (Robert of Gloucester), 1400 (Lanfranc’s “Surgery,” some late Chaucer pieces). It seemed arbitrary to assign them to one century or the next on such scant certainty, so those will show as c. 1300, etc.