The Testament of Love (TEAMS),
ed. R. Allen Shoaf

Simplified Word-list, Alphabetical Order

N.B. It is necessary to understand both what this list is and what it is not. It is not a lexicon, not a lemmatized vocabulary, not a grammar, not even a "glossary," strictly speaking -- it cannot be used as a normative reference for the meanings of ME words. Rather it is a simplified list of all of the foot-of-the-page glosses included in my edition of TL. Thus it contains, e.g., some definitions that are almost certainly "errors": given the corruption in TL and all the consequent problems, the meaning of some words can only be guessed -- "leaned," in one instance, is probably "loaned," but I would like to be more certain of this than I am now or probably ever will be! Hence no one should use this word-list as if it referred to ME tout court -- it refers, rather, to Usk's ME (and that often only insecurely).
    Moreover, this word-list differs from a traditional glossary in various format distinctions. Since it is an alphabetical list in a hypertext environment -- in which, in other words, items will be retrieved electronically as needed -- variant spellings are not rationalized under a root or a dominant morpheme. They are simply listed one after another in alphabetical order, even when the variation is merely one letter -- each form will be searched for itself, in other words, and will be retrieved as such. Some repetition, then, in meanings is inevitable but not differential for use of the list: apertly and appertly will be retrieved independently in situ by the search request, without interfering with the reader's comprehension of the passage being read (and facilitating comprehension of given passages of TL is the sole purpose of this word-list).
    There are 1,727 words glossed in this list, out of approximately 5,884 distinct words (types) in the work (i.e., 29% are glossed).
    Finally, I should mention that when a gloss refers you to the note, it is best if you follow the reference to the notes file -- some effort is made there to explain the crux at issue.