Re: medieval english was knight ranks and titles

John Atkinson wrote:
>
> "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.

Actually she has quite a speech rhapsodizing over the model of it, which
for the landlubber boils down to "shipshape."

> > Have you ever encountered it?
>
> No, but I don't sail.
>
> John.

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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