Friday, November 30, 2007

Fetis


Fetis (adj.) - well-made, neat, handsome.


With poules wyndow corven on his shoos,
In hoses rede he wente fetisly.
Yclad he was ful smal and proprely
Al in a kirtel of a lyght waget;
Ful faire and thikke been the poyntes set.

- Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury tales (1387-1394)


Pronunciation: /fEtIs/

Key
/f/ f in fifty
/E/ e in met
/t/ t in tie
/I/ i in bit
/s/ s in hiss


The Middle-English Word of the Day is selected from Mayhew and Skeat's
"Concise Dictionary of Middle English."
As found on Greg Lindahl's website
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/concise/concise.html

The example text was found at the Middle English Collection of the University of Virginia Library.
http://etext.virginia.edu/collections/languages/english/mideng.browse.html

The approximate pronunciation is determined using Carol Hamill's Middle English Pronunciation Guide
and noted using upon the ASCII-IPA Standard
http://www.island.net/~hamill/medieval/mepronunc.html
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/