Jazz Up Your Lesson
OLD ENGLISH
Here you can enjoy one more set of Old English words. And they are arranged so that you can play a matching game with your students! This guessing game can be played both individually or in small groups of 2–3 students.
| 1. Gorgayse | a. Term for endearment for one’s sweetheart, which literally means “cute little pig’s eye”. It was coined by Chaucer who came up with this attribute on St. Valentine’s Day and used it in one of his love notes. |
| 2. Blash | b. Baggy trousers worn by sailors of the 17th and 18th centuries. This word was a fanciful corruption of French garguesque, “in Greek style”, hinting at their place of origin. |
| 3. Galligaskin | c. At the height of the bubonic plague in Europe during the 1340s, many charlatans took advantage of frightened people by selling them useless salves (целебная мазь; бальзам) and other accompanying treatments. This word is a general name for all the so-called medicine they sold. |
| 4. Piggesnye | d. This word is a shortened Anglo-Saxon name for the bird, considered to be the herald of the dawn – the lark. During the Middle Ages, groups of young boys and girls would go into the fields to catch them as they were considered also a culinary delicacy. |
| 5. Boanthropy | e. Middle English word meaning “elegant and fashionable”. Its root was in Latin word “gurges”, used in the 3rd century to refer to the throat. In the 15th century, a new style of women’s headdress called a “gorgias”, which also covered the throat, was devised. It partially replaced the popular wimple (плат, апостольник на голове монахини) which also covered the head and which is still worn but only by nuns. This fashion was apparently so admired that this word became synonymous with “tastefulness in dress”. Its derivative “gorgeous” has survived into modern times. |
| 6. Quacksalver | f. A rare form of insanity, described in the 19th century, in which a man imagined himself to be an ox. Such madness (or at least its diagnosis) is also found in the Bible in the book of Daniel, which reports that King Nebuchadnezzar “was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen and, his body was wet with the dew of heaven”. The Greek prefix “bo” is used in some other words to signify something connected with oxen. |
| 7. Laverock | g. This is a Scottish word for a framework or pillory (позорный столб), which had a variety of forms. All of them had holes for the necks and wrists of those, convicted for such crimes as sales fraud, bad debts, and fortune-telling. This device was also known by many other nicknames and the practice of putting it in the town square was not completely abolished in England until 1837. |
| 8. Fixfax | h. 300-year-old onomatopoeia (звукоподражание) created this word from “blow” and one of several water-related terms, such as “dash”, or “splash” in order to mimic the sound of a downpour with gusting winds. Nowadays, in the south of England this word means verbal nonsense. |
Key: 1. e; 2. h; 3. b; 4. a; 5. f; 6. c; 7. d; 8. g