hamelen

Middle English

FWOTD – 6 September 2017

Alternative forms

• homelen, heomelen, hamlen

Etymology

From Old English hamelian, possibly from Old Norse (compare Icelandic hamla (“to maim, mutilate”)), from Proto-Germanic *hamalōną, *hamlōną (“to mutilate”), from Proto-Indo-European *kem- (“hornless; mutilated”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈha.me.len/, /ˈha.mə.lən/

Verb

hamelen (third-person singular simple present hameleth, present participle hamelende, hamelynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative hamelede, hamlede, past participle hameled, ihamled)

1. To maim, to mutilate.
   • c. 1380s, [Geoffrey Chaucer, William Caxton, editor], The Double Sorow of Troylus to Telle Kyng Pryamus Sone of Troye [...] [Troilus and Criseyde] (in Middle English), [Westminster]: Explicit per Caxton, published 1482, →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], book II, [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC, folio clxxviii, recto, column 2, lines 960–964:

     For thus forforth I haue thy werke begon / Fro day to day, tyl this day by the morowe / Her loue of frendſhyp haue I to the won / and therfore hath ſhe laid her faith to borow / Algate a foote is hameled of thy sorowe

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. To cut short, to truncate.

Descendants

• English: hamble, hummel (probably)