8/2/2023 0 Comments Notched up def![]() ![]() In addition, the OED lists sixteen more definitions, which are all considerably later. The OED’s definition in this case is ‘A nick (usually one of a number of nicks) made on a stick, etc., as a means of keeping a record, score, or total’. Only slightly earlier is its appearance in Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae (1565), ‘ Crena, a notche in a skore’. According to the OED, notch first appears in the English language in post-medieval times: Leonard Digges, in his A geometrical practise, named Pantometria (1571), writes ‘Make a fyne notche, or marke vpon that subtending staffe’ – a usage defined by the OED as ‘A groove, incision, or indentation (typically V-shaped in cross-section) in an edge, or across or through a surface’. Instead, the word found referring to the marks on a tally stick is nick (see MED). Somewhat surprisingly, notch is not attested in Middle English. No indication is given as to whether the word is at all common in Anglo-Norman or whether its appearance here is a ‘one-off’ – a hapax legomenon.įor the second (online) edition of the AND, all words starting with N- are currently being revised (with the results expected to be published in late 2013 or early 2014), and part of the aim is to provide more exhaustive and transparent analyses of words like noche. (‘ and he produced a sealed tally stick, which had 16 notches and inscription’) ‘et mist avant un taille ensealé qe avoit. The entry lists only one spelling variant, and contains a single citation, taken from the Yearbooks of Edward II (vol. (The -tch spelling is merely an English equivalent for French -ch, as is also found in, for example, hache#3vs. In the first edition of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (1985, for the M-O/U fascicle), the entry for noche is rather minimalistic: the definition provided is simply ‘notch’, which, obviously, is nothing more than the same word in Modern English. Return to list of blog posts Word of the month: ‘nick’, nock’ and ‘notch’ ![]()
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