page_title: English words first attested in Chaucer
section_title: Miscellaneous poems
hierarchical_section_title: English words first attested in Chaucer / List / Miscellaneous poems
caption_attribution_description: English: Manuscript of "A Balade to Rosamond", a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. The writing is not by Chaucer himself but a later scribal copy. This manuscript is the only recorded copy of this text, which appears on the last page of a volume held at the Bodleian Library. The rest of the volume contains the text of Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and it is described in the Bodleian Library special collections catalogue: Rawlinson manuscripts. Underneath the poem are the words "Tregentil" and "Chaucer": "Tregentil" seems to be the name of the scribe. Shelfmark: MS Rawl. poet. 143. fol. 114r. Description confirmed by emailing the Special Collections team at the Bodleian Library
context_page_description: English words first attested in Chaucer, or special manuscript words of Chaucer, are a set of about two thousand English words whose first use found in existing manuscripts is credited to Geoffrey Chaucer. This does not necessarily mean that he was the person to introduce these words into English, but that the earliest extant uses of these words are found in Chaucerian manuscripts. Many of the words were already in everyday speech in 14th-century England. The claim is that these words are found for the first time in written manuscripts where he introduced them in one of his extensive works from 1374 to 1400 as the first author to use these particular words. Many of Chaucer's special manuscript words from the 14th century are used today:
  absent, accident, add, agree, bagpipe, border, box, cinnamon, desk, digestion, dishonest, examination, finally, flute, funeral, galaxy, horizon, infect, ingot, latitude, laxative, miscarry, nod, obscure, observe, outrageous, perpendicular, Persian, princess, resolve, rumour, scissors, session, snort, superstitious, theatre, trench, universe, utility, vacation, Valentine, veal, village, vulgar, wallet, and wildness.
context_section_description: Below are words first attested to in his miscellaneous poems.
  An ABC
  Balade to Rosemounde
  Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn
  Complaint to His Lady
  Fortune
  Gentilesse
  Lak of Stedfastnesse
  Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan
  Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton
  Proverbs
  The Complaint unto Pity
  The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse
  The Complaint of Mars
  The Complaint of Venus
  The Former Age
  The Truth
  Womanly Noblesse
   accumbrous, advocatrice, ancille, artillery, aspen, benevolence, besprent, blaspheme, blasphemer, cannel-bone, carrack, carack, cart-wheel, castigation, causer, collusion, comeliness, complaint, confeder, convict, coverter, craze, create, dapple-grey, delicacy, desespeire, desperation, distrouble, down, dullness, dulness, emboss, enfortune, enlumine, entune, envoy, envy, errant, eterne, fattish, fawn, feigned, fers, fickleness, fleshy, flute, forloin, fortune, fortuned, furious, gere, glazing, half-word, hearse, Hercules, humblesse, inconstance, interess, jane, knack, lake, lambish, lancegay, leer, likeliness, limer, litster, lustihead, meet, midpoint, overstrew, prose, rechase, resign, royalty, scant, seeming, solein, solitude, sore, sough, sturdily, suffisance, suing, surmount, sweaty, tall, Tantalus, tapet, Tartary, tickleness, tongued, traitress, traitoress, Turkey, tyranny, uncorven, uncoupling, unforged, ungrubbed, unsown, weld, well-faring, well-founded, whirling, wildly, wildness
caption: A manuscript copy of 
  Balade to Rosemounde'[20]
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