So far, no comprehensive study of the obsolescence of Scandinavian loanwords in English has ever been published. This book remedies that situation, and presents an analysis of the causes of obsolescence of Scandinavian loanwords in English since the 15th century. The study has mainly been based on the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary. Over 300 loanwords have been selected, grouped into semantic fields and analysed. To account for their disappearance, reasons such as the rivalry of synonyms, the exclusive use in local dialects, the disappearance of the referent as...

This is a volume of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Historical English Word-Formation and Semantics held in Warsaw on 10-11 December 2011 and organized by the School of English at the Warsaw Division of the University of Social Sciences in Lodz. The conference was attended by scholars from Poland, USA, Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Japan, Italy, Ukraine and Slovakia. Their papers covered a wide range of topics concerning the area of word formation and semantics in Old and Middle English."

The volume is a selection of papers on a wide range of topics in the area of medieval language and literature. The linguistic papers cover a wide range of problems from phonology to grammar, semantics and pragmatics. The literary papers discuss various aspects of Middle English texts.