Old French
1
9.1
- noun
- Specialized
:
francés antiguo
- I translated a poem from Old French to modern English.
- Old French author
Examples
-
One is tempted to suspect the Old French author of a pun on cervus and cereus.
Academic text (1994) -
While the labels and directions of the itinerary had been in the vernacular of Old French, when the monk arrived at Jerusalem, he confronted texts in the elevated language of Latin.
Academic text (1999) -
I translated it from Old French.
-
The word passion springs from Middle English by way of Old French and Late Latin (Ecclesiastic).
Fiction book (1991) -
For the translations from the old French, I have consulted Smarr's work.
Fiction book (1991) -
In 16th-century France, the word mode began to supersede the Old French expression cointerie to mean 'in style.'
Academic text (2011) -
It was a reprint of an old French treatise on a certain kind of madness.
Fiction book (1993) -
Calumet is a corruption of Old French chalomel, meaning reed; the river was lined with reeds and in places choked by aquatic growth.
Academic text (2005) -
Descriptions of the routes' directions and the number of days' travel, written in Old French (for example, jurnee day or jurnee e demie day and a half), construct the roads that connect the cities.
Academic text (1999) -
The phenomenon we are discussing may be observed, first, in the Old French Eneas, a kind of imaginative synthesis and "transposition" of the Aeneid, composed ca. 1160 in northern France by an anonymous Norman poet.
Academic text (1994)
Synonyms
A group of old French dialects spoken in northern and central France in the Middle Ages
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the form of the French language from an earlier historical period' is directly derivable from combining 'old' (earlier/historical) with 'French' (the language), following the productive English pattern for language-stage labels (e.g., Old English, Middle French). This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Old French is a name for the form of French people used 'long ago' in the Middle Ages. It pairs Old (meaning 'from long ago') with French, so today we use it to talk about the French language found in medieval books and documents.