Revision of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (N-Q)

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND) is the only dictionary which attempts to give a comprehensive account of the French language as it was used in the British Isles after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Initially published in book form from 1977 to 1992, a thoroughgoing revision has been under way since c. 1990 ; it has currently reached M. The new edition, at first printed (MHRA, 2005) for A-E, is now an exclusively online dictionary (www.anglo-norman.net), freely available with no restrictions of access. It is widely respected as the authority on Anglo-Norman vocabulary and in 2011 was awarded the prestigious Prix Honoré Chavée by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris. The present proposal is for a continuation of this revision for the letters N to Q. In addition, we propose several substantive additions and innovations: i) a complete overhaul and expansion of the usage labels (which indicate domains in which particular words are used: e.g. botanical, legal, or commercial), with the added ability to search by these labels and pull out (for example) all terms pertaining to architecture; ii) the introduction of systematic cross-references to the immediately related dictionaries of French, Latin, and English; iii) the addition of short narrative accounts after entries to explain editorial decisions and to provide extra linguistic, social, or historical information. This last element reinforces the extent to which the AND, like any serious dictionary, also documents and charts the reality of (in this case, medieval) society. Anglo-Norman was the language of the Conqueror and his followers but it rapidly became the language of a flourishing imaginative literature, and the vehicle for administration, the law, and commerce both within the British Isles, and internationally. It was a variety of medieval French, the most important language after Latin in the Middle Ages, used throughout the whole of Western Europe in diplomacy, trade, science, and literature. The British Isles were of course multilingual throughout the Middle Ages. Inevitably, Anglo-Norman is thus important not only for the history of French (for which it supplies many of the oldest surviving literary texts) and the history of British and Irish society, but also as a main language of record alongside medieval Latin and perhaps most significantly, Middle English. The Anglo-Norman element in medieval and indeed modern English is massively important and the progress of the AND is at last making possible a proper understanding of it (and of its relationship to the other languages of the British Isles). It is striking, for example, how much Anglo-Norman there is -- and increasingly -- in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, and in the dictionaries of English (Middle English Dictionary, OED); and the AND editors take particular pride in the extent to which the new OED etymologies make extensive use of the AND. In addition to the main purpose of the present project, which is the revision and improvement of the AND, it is also, and increasingly, the case that the AND (like the language it records) cannot and would not wish to operate in isolation. For several decades, the project has been closely linked to major, high-calibre dictionary enterprises not only in the UK (DMLBS and now OED), but also abroad: the Etymological Dictionary of Old French (DEAF) in Germany, and in France, the Dictionary of Middle French for the period 1330-1500, the French Etymological Dictionary (FEW), and the recently-launched pan-European Romance Etymological Dictionary, based in Nancy (France) and Saarbrücken (Germany). As all of these dictionaries are increasingly electronic, the very real prospect of interlinking them, and working in closer collaboration on our common objectives, is now on the horizon, and the AND, as the major British Romance element in the group, fully intends to be part of the European future in this regard.