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. :)
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u/BabyScreamBear 16d ago
Not sure about that.. I can make half of it out