Words That Meant Something Else Entirely
Nothing marks you out as an outsider faster than getting the words wrong, and medieval English had a habit of using words to mean the near-opposite of what they mean today.
Calling a woman “nice” was no compliment at all — it meant fussy, and described a wife who nagged and found fault with everything. Calling a child “naughty” was far worse than it sounds now: the word meant “nothing, not even human,” and was reserved for murderers and rapists, not disobedient toddlers. A clever child, confusingly, was “silly” — meaning sweet and innocent. Praising a friend’s cooking or poetry as “amazing” wasn’t flattering either; it meant bewildering and confusing, as if lost in a maze, while “astounding” implied something had literally hit you hard enough on the head to see stars.
Beyond vocabulary, accent and language marked you out just as sharply. Ordinary English sounded almost foreign by modern standards; churchmen, lawyers, and scholars conducted their business in Latin; and royalty and nobility spoke a form of French well into the 14th century, a fading but still-prestigious mark of good breeding. Strangers, foreigners (from a different county), and aliens (from a different country) were automatically the first suspects whenever anything went wrong locally — missing sheep, a dried-up stream, any unexplained misfortune. During the 1381 Revolt of the Commons, Flemish immigrants living in London became a particular target for mob violence, in part because they’d originally been invited over specifically for their weaving skills; it was said that anyone unable to pronounce “bread and cheese” correctly must be Flemish, and was fair game for the crowd on that basis alone.
Step into 14th-century England—start reading The Draychester Chronicles today.