"fairy," OED 4a

[Joel S. Berson]

WHO-ever else they read, they certainly read Chaucer.  11,032
citations in OED2.  (He's lost a few: according to John Willinsky's
"Empire of Words," he had 11, 696 in OED1.)  I can't count those from
the "Canterbury Tales" -- their cited by individual tale.

JOel

At 1/19/2007 09:45 AM, you wrote:
>         Well, The Century Dictionary thinks Chaucer meant the imaginary
>being sense, not that that proves anything.  I assume that the OED
>considered and rejected this possibility; whatever else their reading
>may have missed, I'm sure they scoured the Canterbury Tales.
>
>
>John Baker
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
>Of Douglas G. Wilson
>Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:09 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: "fairy," OED 4a
>
> >Regardless of the correct text in Gower, isn't the Wife of Bath's Tale
> >a valid use of fairy in this sense?  "This maketh that ther ben no
>fayeryes."
>
>I think it might be. But there is/was another countable "fairy" used
>during the same period: OED sense 3: "magical contrivance"/etc. This
>also would fit here, I think, meaning essentially "enchantment".
>Difficult to distinguish between these possibilities here (at least for
>me). I wonder what the OED editors think/thought.
>
>-- Doug Wilson
>
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