Dear Dick
I was leafing through my daughter's copy of Chaucer's
Works yesterday and found four occurrences of the word
'grame'. The details with the glossary meanings and
line numbers are:
Source: The Riverside Chaucer - 3rd Ed, OUP
Canterbury Tales
The Canon's Yeoman's Tale VIII 1403 meaning grief,
sorrow
"A mannes myrthe it wol turne into grame,"
Troilus and Crysede IV 529 meaning grief, sorrow
"And with thy manhod letten al this grame?"
Troilus and Crysede III 1028 meaning anger
"If it be likkere love, or hate, or grame;"
Anelide and Arcite 276 meaning suffering
"And do to me adversite and grame,"
I have also found a 1919 copy of Skeat's edition,
which has the same occurrences.
These are not the Halliwell examples, but to my
(untutored) eye look to be very similar in usage.
With best regards,
David Page, Harrow
--- "Dick A. van den Toorn"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Greetings
all!
>
> In his message of the 12th inst. Mr. Tony Hanley
> wrote:
> [Also, I am not certain of meaning of the word
> 'grame'],
> while Mr. George Engle wrote on the same day:
> [The word "grame" means sorrow or grief.]
>
> In 1850 Messrs. John Russell Smith of London
> published the
> 'Dictionary of ARCHAIC WORDS' compiled by James
> Orchard
> Halliwell. Halliwell's preface dates from 1847.
> On page 413 of his dictionary we'll find the
> following:
>
> Quote
> GRAME. Anger ; grief. (A.-S.)
> Moradas seyde, hyt ys grate schame
> On a hors to wreke thy grame. (MS. Cantab. Ff.
> II 38, f. 79)
> and
> Wist my lorde of this house,
> With grame he wold the grete, (MS. Lincoln A. i.
> 17, f. 53)
> Unquote
>
> I can almost verbatim translate Halliwell's examples
> into Middle Dutch
> (spoken before 1500 AD) and when you read my
> translation aloud it will
> almost sounds like the 'English' verses (I am NOT
> asserting here, of course,
> that Middle Dutch and Old English were the same!).
> By the bye, unfortunately,
> Mr. Halliwell did not specify his sources
> anyfurther, neither in the Preface nor
> in the Index. If anyone on the RK list could give me
> a helping hand in this
> respect I would be grateful (I don't think 'Cantab.'
> means Canterbury Tales?).
>
> In today's Dutch [GRAM] is still an everday word
> indeed:
> GRAM. Wrath ; wrathful ; anger. (the vowel 'a' in
> Dutch 'gram' to be
> pronounced as in the name 'Bach', German
> pronunciation)
>
> In Middle Dutch as well as in Old Dutch, Old Saxon,
> Old High German
> the word for anger, wrath, etc. was (is) GRAM also;
> Old English had both
> GRAM and GROM, Anglo-Saxon (as we have seen) GRAME.
> Outside
> the circle of Germanic languages we find the cognate
> word CHROMOS
> in Old Greek meaning gnashing -> grating. I can
> quote several similar
> examples from other languages, however, the above
> will suffice.
> The Indo-European root is *GHREM- and originally was
> an onomatopoeia
> indicating a certain 'growling sound'. Also note an
> Anglo-Saxon word like
> [gremman] or [gremian] and the Old Greek [chremidzo]
> (= 'I neigh', or,
> 'I am neighing'). Further: GRIMaces angry people
> make, Russian poGROM
> (literally 'like thunder' = 'like anger of the
> gods'?). Dutch still preserves the old
> germanic vowel gradation GRAM (see above) GRIMMIG (=
> gruesome,
> grisly, furious, angrily) and GROMMEN (to growl, to
> rumble, to groan).
>
> The intriguing point is: in about 1840 the word
> [GRAM] or [GRAME] was
> practically forgotten in the English language.
> Otherwise why should Mr. Halliwell
> includes it in his dictionary of ARCHAIC words?
> Today this word apparently
> has been lost completely in English. As far as I
> know Rudyard Kipling never used it.
> Are "sorrow", "grief", "anger" and "wrath" for
> "grame" really synonymous in English?
>
> Sincerely yours,
> Dick A. van den Toorn.
>
>
>
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