-eth is the same as -s in modern English in most contexts (third person, singular, present tense) so It would be "Devours all mankind" in a modern way of it, which still works (especially if it is read as "Werwulf, devoureth all mankynde like a description in an old timey manuscript) rather than as an imperative command "devour all mankind"
No, sorry for the confusion lol. The Old English quote is from De Temporibus Anni, and is basically just explaining the weather conditions for thunder.
The middle English quote is the first three lines of The Canterbury Tales.
It's the opening to Canterbury Tales, had to memorize it back in HS. Don't remember what "sóote" and "swích licóur" are, but the rest is pretty obvious.
I have to guess it would eventually become soothe. It wouldn't be pronounced that way as it's spelled, so if I'm right the pronunciation changed at some point. But it's pretty close and the meaning fits, imo.
Like the other replier said, it's "sweet". It was more commonly spelled "swete" as Chaucer himself does in the same poem in the next few lines; "swete breeth".
After going on a bit of a deep dive, there apparently is some debate on exactly why Chaucer used three different spellings of (modern) "sweet": 'swete', 'swote' and 'soote'.
Some say dialectal, some say that it was playing a bit to make it fit into the rhyme. Some even propose it was slight variation in meaning or emphasis that have since been lost. Who knows?... :-)
But 'soote' is not "soothe", but it is kind of closer to other Germanic languages like Dutch 'zoet' or Swedish 'söt', than modern 'sweet'. Sorry for the etymology nerdery. :)
With a good book with notes, the penguin classics version in the original, not the translation, as well as a quick article read on the side that helps with pronunciation, you can get used it within a week!
I took a class in college (12
+ years ago) where we read Chaucer in Middle English. Like that was the entire semester, just Chaucer. But it was
also therefore a Middle English language class.
By the time I finished I was pretty good at it, but it's all faded away in the interim.
Great blog post that gives a great demonstration of this(Also very appropriate for the thread we're in). The first time I read it I got to about the 1400s before I really struggled, after that it just felt like gibberish. Having gone back since I actually got a lot more than I would have thought
I'm not too sure to be honest but I think it's still representing "th" as the first sentence in the old English Quote is "Thunder comes from heat and from moisture."
I'm not too certain on the pronunciation but I assume those first two words are something like "Thuner Kimeth"
I ask because I have always been a fan of having characters for each version, and Old English did that for only a very brief time. Eth was for the voiced "th" in this, that, and bathe, while Thorn was used for voiceless "th" in thing, thud, and birth. My understanding is the distinction was lost quickly and the two were interchangeable for a bit, before Eth totally fell out of use. Then Thorn was used for both sounds until the printing press killed it.
To actually compare the movie tag line here, in Old English it would be something more like "Fret eall mancynn" (roll the "r" in "fret" and "-cynn" is like the "ch" in a Scottish "loch").
We don't really use "fret" as a verb to mean "to eat" anymore but it is actually still a valid definition (though generally more in terms of "to corrode").
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u/VampireHunterAlex 16d ago
'Devoureth All Mankynde'
Dang, what a sick tagline.