A Middle English Dictionary Companion
(Supplementary Information)

This site, maintained by the editors of the Middle English Dictionary, holds miscellaneous documents and information, mostly generated by exchanges with interested users of the MED, and thought potentially useful to the MED readership at large. If you have used the online MED, its Bibliography, or the associated Corpus of Middle English, exhausted their help files, and been left wondering, "what does this abbreviation mean?" or "how else can I use this data?" (etc.), this is the place to look. If something is not here, there is a good chance we can add it, so ask. This page largely reproduces, consolidates -- and in part expands on -- pages previously located in personal file space at https://websites.umich.edu/~pfs/mec/med/ , http://unencrypted.web.itd.umich.edu/~pfs/mec/code/*, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfs/mec/code, and related addresses. Anyone accustomed to finding information there will find the latest version here, and maybe a little more.

1. Middle English Dictionary

A. MED headwords

The XML and HTML files listed on this page are designed to facilitate linking to the online version of the Middle English Dictionary by providing lists of MED headwords paired with the ID number of the corresponding MED entry. The format of these lists keeps changing as convenience, experiment, whim, and the needs of particular users have dictated. The most recent versions are straightforward excerpts from the raw XML of the MED files themselves with only minimal alteration. (A new version is overdue and will appear when time allows.)

Note: Every version of these lists is based on the working copy of MED accessible to the editors. They are all therefore to some agree 'ahead' of the files available in the online MED as hosted in the Middle English Compendium. I.e., they may include entries, perhaps many entries, not yet in the online MED, or may mark some entries as 'deprecated' (flagged for eventual deletion) that are still alive and kicking in the online MED. Because they reflect current work, they are also to some degree obsolete as soon as they are created, since current efforts produce a new entry roughly every day or two.

Given an MED entry ID, a URL can always be constructed for it on this simple pattern: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/[MED id], e.g. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED7

B. Maps of MED entries to modern English equivalent(s), OED entries, and DOE entries

Very much a work in progress, incomplete, and rife with both errors and inconsistencies, we maintain a set of files that map each MED headword to the corresponding OED entry, DOE entry, and Modern English equivalent equivalent -- with 'equivalent' meaning equivalence of form and history, not of meaning. Despite its flaws, we use this to populate links to those dictionaries as well as the search for 'modern English equivalent,' available as an option in the online MED.

C. Linnaean names

Extracted from MED's definitions and listed. 'Linnaean' names (families, genera, and binomials) are found throughout MED, but only recently have we made an effort to find and tag them distinctively, in a <TAX> (for 'taxonomy') tag. Many doubtless remain undiscovered, but provisional results are available here.

Note that these names were introduced by the MED's editors from diverse sources available to them at the time: some may be inherited from OED and date from the 19th century; others from handbooks years or decades old even at the time. The names have certainly not kept up with the constant flux in scientific nomenclature, though most are likely recognized 'synonyms' of current names. Note also that the production staff at MED probably did not check these names against recognized sources (unlike the quotations, which they did check), but depended on handwritten slips provided by editors. They are therefore more apt to simple typographic error than other parts of the Dictionary.

D. The online site

2. MED Bibliography (and bibliographic aids to the MED)

A. Documentation of MED practices and policies
Including the Plan and Bibliography to the print dictionary, and a meagre bibliography of reference sources used in the creation of MED.

B. What the MED Bibliography is and isn't
Especially, how it preserves, and how it differs from, the original MED Plan & Bibliography.

3. Corpus of Middle English

A. CME titles and files.
File list and browse list of CME titles.

B. Downloading CME files
How to obtain the raw XML of the CME transcriptions (as a bulk download).

C. CME history, specs, and apologies
What the CME is (a lot of mostly Middle English, accurately rendered), is not (a true linguistic corpus), and why. A brief history of a thirty-year project.

4. "Code"

MED and Bibliography

Only a few pieces of code govern the MED, Bibliography, and associated files. The /code directory of this site contains the basic schemas and style sheets which may be invoked by those files.

Corpus of Middle English

These files are in a mixture of formats and encoding schemes. Details to follow.

5. Reports and notices

6. More info