Bible English: Chapters on Old and Disused Expressions in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer

What it is about

This is a study of obsolete and unusual expressions in the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible and in the Book of Common Prayer. It is arranged by topic: an introduction, peculiarities of form, words that have lost some of their powers, peculiarities of construction (chapter IV), words relating to armour and dress, words that have degenerated, words that are altogether obsolete, addenda and an index. Each entry gives the word, its older sense, and quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare, Milton and other writers, with a verse reference. Chapter IV, for example, notes verbs used with an object in a sense they no longer have: "bloomed" with a direct object, as in Milton's "bloomed blossoms", and "famish" in the sense of starving someone. The book has about 84,000 words over 316 pages. It contains no counts, and the scan has OCR errors in its headings.

Ideas

I1. en/src/dict.rs: a valency flag on dictionary entries for transitive senses that have gone out of use (bloom, famish, and the other chapter IV verbs). The parser could then mark a reading as archaic instead of failing. Measure attachments on the verses the book quotes (Numbers xvii.8, Zephaniah ii.11), with and without the flag.
I2. Negative control: the flag must not change the parse of modern sentences. "The flowers bloomed" must stay as it is, and any change to a modern-only sentence is a regression to report.
I3. Use the book's index as a gold list for the coverage of morph::archaic. Report, for each group of the book (words of form, words that lost powers, degenerated words, obsolete words), how many entries archaic marks. The obsolete group should be marked more often than the merely unusual one. Run twice.
I4. 10. Vocabulary: archaic words and false friends: list the index words that are missing from the standard lexicon, with the sense the quotations give, as a small seed file in en/seeds/.

For Mova

The chapters are 10. Vocabulary: archaic words and false friends and 11. The biblical style (the King James register), and 09. Early Modern and archaic forms. The code is en/src/dict.rs, en/src/morph.rs (morph::archaic) and the tokenizer in en/src/tok.rs for the verse references. The measures are the flag's effect on the quoted verses and the archaic coverage per group of the index.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@book{davies1875bible,
  title = {{Bible English: Chapters on Old and Disused Expressions in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer}},
  author = {Davies, Thomas Lewis Owen},
  year = {1875},
  url = {https://archive.org/details/cu31924029271968}
}

References

10 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

Hammond, Practical Catechisme, &c., 1646. Harvey, Chr The Synagogue (Nichol's British Poets), 1853. Herbert, Geo., The Temple (Nichol's Brit. Poets), 1853. , Homilies appointed to be read in Churches, S.P.C.K., 1833. Hooker, Works, with Walton's Life, Oxford, 1850. [Book, chapter, section.] find
Hooper, Bp., Early Works (Parker Society), 1843. find
Horsley, Bp., Sermons, Lond. 1827. Howell, Familiar Letters, 9th edit., 1726. [Book, section, letter.] find
Hutchinson, Works (Parker Society), 1842. find
Jewel, Bp., Apology, translated by Lady Bacon, ed. Jelf, 1852. find
Jewel, Bp., Works (Parker Society), 1845-50. find
Jonson, Ben, Works, ed. Gifford and Cunningham. Latimer, Bp., Sermons and Remains (Parker Society), 1844-5. find
Maitland, Essays on the Reformation, 1849. Malory, Sir T., Morte d'Arthur, Globe Edit., 1871. find
Marlowe, Works, ed. Cunningham, 1870. find
Massinger, Works, ed. Cunningham, 1870. Maundeville, Sir J., Travels, in Early Travels in Palestine (Bohn's Antiq. Lib.), 1848. find

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