Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 103, Solitary Confignment.

In this episode, we're going to look at one of the most important documents composed

during the early Middle English period.

It's a guide for female hermits and recluses who were called anchoresses.

The manuscript is called on Crenowisa, literally the anchoresses guide.

Now the text is important for a couple of reasons.

It shows how the English language was continuing to evolve, and it's also notable because it's

one of the first English documents to contain a large number of French loanwords.

Unlike prior documents which have a few loanwords here and there, the on Crenowisa features

lots of new words.

In fact, over 200 common words that we use every day appear for the first time in the

manuscript.

So this time we'll examine how this important text came about, and we'll also examine

a few of the common words that were introduced in the manuscript.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com

and you can sign up to support the podcast at patreon.com slash historyofenglish.

And as always, you can reach me by email at kevinathistoryofenglishpodcast.com.

Now this time I want to begin in a very familiar place, monasteries.

Throughout much of the old and middle English period, I've talked about monks and monasteries,

but I've done that because many of the surviving documents from those periods were written

or copied by monks, and many of them were preserved in libraries in monasteries and

...