Book Description

Excerpt from A Dictionary of Archaic Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, From the Fourteenth Century, Vol. 1 of 2: A I Having had in view the wants of readers unskilled in early English rather thzm the literary entertainment of professed students, I have admitted numerous forms the etymologist will properly regard corrupt, and which might easily have been reduced to their original sources. I may have carried the system too far, but to have excluded corruptions would certainly have rendered the work less generally useful; and it is not to be presumed that every one who consults a manual of this kind will despise the assistance thus afl'orded. There are, too, many corruptions the sources of which are not readily perceivable even by the most experienced. So many archaisms are undoubtedly still preserved by our rural population, that it was thought the incorporation of a glossary of provincialisms would render the work a more useful guide than one restricted to known archaisms. When Bay in 1674 published the first collection of English localisms, he gives three reasons for having undertaken the task First, because I knew not of anything that hath been already done in this kind; second, because I conceive they may be of some use to them who shall have occasion to travel the Northern counties, in helping them to understand the common language there; third, because they may also afford some diversion to the curious, and give them occa sion of making many considerable remarks. It is remarkable that Ray seems to have been unacquainted with the real value of provincial words, and most of his successors appear to have collected without the only suficient reason for pre serving them, the important assistance they continually afford in glossing the works of our early writers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.