a dayes, belike, as helpe me God, ten of þe clokke, no malice at all, bi and bi; and Chaucer uses the phrases, to bring about, to drive a bargain, platly ayenst him. Bondman in the Parson's sermon is taken in the Gloucester sense, not in that of Rutland; and this bad sense it has kept ever since. We see caterwaw and newe fangel; also award, which seems to come from the Icelandic aqvarda (allot).[1] Badder stands for pejor.
As to the many French words employed by Chaucer, he often yokes them with their English brethren, using them in the same breath; thus he talks of seuretee or sikernesse, robbe and reve.[2] He has also scarcely and menes (instrumenta). In the Squieres Tale, about line 180, we see the first instance of a well-known vulgarism:
‘There may no man it drive:
And cause why, for they con not the craft.’
Our lower orders have refused to part with Chaucer's markis, though our upper class can only talk of a marquis or marquess. That nobleman's lady is called by Chaucer a markisesse. The adjective able had been used in England before he was born. He has sextein (sexton) and raffle, and talks of a pair of tonges. He sometimes leans to the Latin rather than the French, writing equal as well as egality, perfection as well as parfit.
Chaucer's speech is much the same as Mandeville's, and very unlike it is to what must have been the London dialect a hundred years before their time. Gower
