Chapter 8
The taking off and catching on of etymological spellings in Early Modern
English
Evidence from the EEBO Corpus
This chapter examines the path that orthographic
etymologisation, as in doubt and
verdict, followed mainly in the course
of the sixteenth century. Few corpus-based studies have been undertaken on
etymological spellings, but the recent availability of the large-sized EEBO
Corpus must be of great help in making it clear when and how etymological
spellings took off and caught on in the Early Modern English period. Besides
giving a close description of the process of the orthographic shift, we
discuss some methodological problems in the use of the corpus, stressing at
the same time that it is an excellent tool, when carefully used, for studies
in the history of English.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Previous studies
- 3.The EEBO Corpus
- 4.Analysis and discussion
- 4.1admonish
- 4.2amethyst
- 4.3apothecary
- 4.4captive
- 4.5cauldron
- 4.6cognizance
- 4.7falcon
- 4.8lethargy “dullness”
- 4.9lethargy “lead”
- 4.10orthography
- 4.11phantasm
- 4.12phantom
- 4.13pheasant
- 4.14salmon
- 4.15verdict
- 4.16Co-occurrence of spelling variants
- 5.Process of etymologising: A case of lexical diffusion?
- 6.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
Sources
-
References
-
Appendix
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Sources
Corpus of Historical American
English. 2010. Presented
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at [URL])
Corpus Resource Database
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EEBO
Corpus. 2017. Presented
by Mark Davies. (Available online
at [URL])
OED =
The Oxford English
Dictionary. 1989 (2nd
edn.). By John A. Simpson & Edmund S. C. Weiner, Oxford University Press, Oxford. (Available
online as Oxford English Dictionary Online
at [URL])
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Iyeiri, Yoko & Mitsumi Uchida
2021.
Etymological Spellings in William Caxton’s Translations.
English Studies 102:8
► pp. 991 ff.

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