Topic: etmology
Order Description
This is a short analysis of a dictionary entry of a single word, using the online Oxford English
Dictionary, and the Middle English corpus (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/)
the word is ( walk )
Please give a prose description of a word’s etymology as presented in the Oxford English Dictionary
(use the online version available through the library).
.
You should specify:
1) The word, its spelling, its pronunciation (in IPA), its part of speech (verb, noun, adjective..) and
its meaning.
2) The complete etymology of the word (going back to its earliest known or reconstructed form).
Be careful here, if the word is derived from another word in the language (as edit is derived from
editor), then you will need to follow up by looking at the history of that other word (so, if you chose
edit you would have to look at the history of the word editor as well to trace the word as far back as
possible). THIS MUST BE IN YOUR OWN WORDS AND WRITTEN CLEARLY DO NOT CUT
AND PASTE FROM THE OED!!!!
This must include the form of the word in Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and
Modern English. (There are often multiple forms at each stage, you should pick the earliest form shown
for each period rather than just listing them all).
3) The first attestation of the word (which written document first shows the word written down).
Don’t just give the abbreviation from the OED, find out what the full name of the text was and state it
clearly. You need to explain what the book is and who wrote it (if this is known).
4) TWO examples of the word’s use in Middle English (using the Middle English corpus:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/). Again, you need to explain what the books that contains these
examples are ad who wrote them (if known). You may need to do some googling to figure this out.
5) Any significant change in meaning.
Some of the abbreviations and symbols of the OED can be confusing. Luckily, there is a guide to these
symbols here:
https://public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/