Ælfheah, more commonly known today as Alphege, was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, later Archbishop of Canterbury. He became an anchorite before being elected abbot of Bath Abbey. His reputation for piety and sanctity led to his promotion to the episcopate and, eventually, to his becoming archbishop. Ælfheah furthered the cult of Dunstan and also encouraged learning. He was captured by Viking raiders in 1011 during the siege of Canterbury and killed by them the following year after refusing to allow himself to be ransomed. Ælfheah was canonised as a saint in 1078. Thomas Becket, a later Archbishop of Canterbury, prayed to Ælfheah just before his murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland.
Nathan Bailey, was an English philologist and lexicographer. He was the author of several dictionaries, including his Universal Etymological Dictionary, which appeared in some 30 editions between 1721 and 1802. Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum was the primary resource mined by Samuel Johnson for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Honorius was a member of the Gregorian mission to Christianize the Anglo-Saxons from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism in 597 AD who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. During his archiepiscopate, he consecrated the first native English bishop of Rochester as well as helping the missionary efforts of Felix among the East Anglians. Honorius was the last to die among the Gregorian missionaries.
John Davies, Mallwyd was one of Wales's leading scholars of the late Renaissance. He wrote a Welsh grammar and dictionary. He was also a translator and editor and an ordained minister of the Church of England.
Bast fibre is plant fibre collected from the phloem or bast surrounding the stem of certain dicotyledonous plants. It supports the conductive cells of the phloem and provides strength to the stem. Some of the economically important bast fibres are obtained from herbs cultivated in agriculture, as for instance flax, hemp, or ramie, but bast fibres from wild plants, as stinging nettle, and trees such as lime or linden, willow, oak, wisteria, and mulberry have also been used in the past. Bast fibres are classified as soft fibres, and are flexible. Fibres from monocotyledonous plants, called "leaf fibre", are classified as hard fibres and are stiff.
John Worlidge or John Woolridge (1640–1700) was a noted English agriculturalist, who lived in Petersfield, Hampshire, England. He was considered a great expert on rural affairs, and one of the first British agriculturalists to discuss the importance of farming as an industry.
John Ryder (1562–1632) was a lexicographer who published an English-Latin Dictionary that was widely used in the 17th century. A favourite of Elizabeth I, he was Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and the Anglican Bishop of Killaloe.
Thomas Gascoigne (1404–1458) was an English medieval theologian and academic administrator. He was twice Vice-Chancellor and twice Chancellor of Oxford University.
The New World of English Words, or, a General Dictionary is an English dictionary compiled by Edward Phillips and first published in London in 1658. It was the first folio English dictionary.
A New English Dictionary: or, a complete collection of the most proper and significant words, commonly used in the language was an English dictionary compiled by philologist John Kersey and first published in London in 1702.
John Kersey the younger was an English philologist and lexicographer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He is notable for editing three dictionaries in his lifetime: A New English Dictionary (1702), a revised version of Edward Phillips' The New World of English Words (1706) and the Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1708).
An Universal Etymological English Dictionary was a dictionary compiled by Nathan Bailey and first published in London in 1721. It was the most popular English dictionary of the eighteenth century until the publication of Samuel Johnson's massive dictionary in 1755. As an indicator of its popularity, the dictionary reached its 20th edition in 1763 and its 27th edition in 1794. Its last edition (30th) was in 1802. It was a little over 900 pages long. In compiling his dictionary, Bailey borrowed greatly from John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1706), which in turn drew from the later editions of Edward Phillips's The New World of English Words. Like Kersey's dictionary, Bailey's dictionary was one of the first monolingual English dictionaries to focus on defining words in common usage, rather than just difficult words.
William Somner (1598–1669) was an English antiquarian scholar, the author of the first dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon language.
Cock ale, popular in 17th and 18th-century England, was an ale whose recipe consisted of normal ale, to which was later added a bag stuffed with a parboiled, skinned and gutted cock, and various fruits and spices.
Edward Lye (1694–1767) was an 18th-century scholar of Old English and Germanic philology.
The history of Scottish Gaelic dictionaries goes back to the early 17th century. The high-point of Gaelic dictionary production was in the first half of the 19th century, as yet unrivalled even by modern developments in the late 20th and early 21st century. The majority of dictionaries published to date have been Gaelic to English dictionaries.
Nicholas Lloyd (1630–1680) was an English cleric and academic, best known as a historical compiler for his Dictionarium Historicum.
Thomas Lediard (1685–1743) was an English writer and surveyor.
Mockery or mocking is the act of insulting or making light of a person or other thing, sometimes merely by taunting, but often by making a caricature, purporting to engage in imitation in a way that highlights unflattering characteristics. Mockery can be done in a lighthearted and gentle way, but can also be cruel and hateful, such that it "conjures images of corrosion, deliberate degradation, even subversion; thus, 'to laugh at in contempt, to make sport of' (OED)". Mockery appears to be unique to humans, and serves a number of psychological functions, such as reducing the perceived imbalance of power between authority figures and common people. Examples of mockery can be found in literature and the arts.
