Re: medieval english was knight ranks and titles


"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...

> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> > Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>
>> >> Not <zare>, but <3are>, where <3> stands for the letter
>> >> yogh; here it has the sound of <y>, and indeed the spelling
>> >> <yare> goes back to the 13th century. The word means
>> >> 'ready, prepared. This quotation is for the meaning 'a
>> >> common soldier'; the sense is 'We are now seven thousand
>> >> knights ready for battle, not counting common soldiers and
>> >> other infantry'.
>>
>> > Is that the word that survives (barely) in *Philadelphia Story* and
>> > crossword puzzles?
>>
>> I don't know *Philadelphia Story*, but it wouldn't surprise
>
> It's one of the all-time great romantic comedies! The *Moonstruck* of
> its generation! Katharine Hepburn, aka Tracy Lord, describes her
> sailboat, or sloop, or ketch, to country bumpkin newspaper reporter
> Jimmy Stewart as "yar," and later on she gets described the same way.
> (Cary Grant loses out.) For years I tried to get the original Philip
> Barry play out of the library, but it was never available. (Of course
> that might simply mean all the copies were stolen.)
>
>> me to find it in crossword puzzles. It's in AHD3; the
>> meaning that I gave above is labelled 'Archaic', but the
>> meaning 'lively, active' carries no special marking.
>
> It's used in the film in a sense of 'super-shipshape'.

Are you sure? According to my SOD, it means "responsive to the helm" in old
nautical usage.

> Have you ever encountered it?

No, but I don't sail.

John.


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