Hello!

I'm trying to find a good source for the definitions and/or modern-day equivalents of some out-of-use adverbs, conjunctions, etc., such as "therewith" and "where(un)to". I don't intend to cut and paste anything like "where dost thou seek me" and "thy sword dost pierce mine breast" or anything like that. Yuck! I shudder to think of it.

However, I'd like to find something that means including and was in use by the 1350s. EX: "He honored those loyal to his cause with the royal favor and awarded great swaths of land, including the barony of Loch Awe." (Including doesn't work in this sentence at all--it kind of sticks out and makes an otherwise decent sentence sound like an auditor's report.)

Any ideas?

Include is from the Middle English includen, from the Latin inclūdere, "to enclose". It would therefore quite likely have been used in the 1350s, although the earliest date I can see is 1375-1425. Whether it was in use then as an adverb I cannot say.

Perhaps you could avoid it by using "as well as" or "along with"?

According, to OED, it was in 1430 that include was first used to mean "contain as one of its members". (It had been used in a different sense a decade previously.) And not until 1853 was including used in the sense of inclusive of: "A large body of English landscapists come into this class, including most clever sketchers from nature."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

Trying to find something for you, I turned to Chaucer, computer-searched the translator’s modern version for any form of ‘include’, and thehn. checked those places for Chaucer’s wording from the late 1300s. Here are the three “hits”. Nothing seems really right to me, but perhaps something will strike you differently. (The last one seems on point at first, but I suspect that the include is a poor translation, and that confuse or conflate would be better.)

In diet he was measured as could be,. . . . . . . . . . Of his diete mesurable was he,
Including naught of superfluity,. . . . . . . . . . . . . .For it was of no superfluitee,
But nourishing and easy.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .But of greet norissyng, and digestible.

If you should think I vary in my speech,. . . . . . . . .If that yow thynke I varie as in my speche,
As thus: That I do quote you somewhat more. . . . .As thus, though that I telle somwhat moore
Of proverbs than you've ever heard before,. . . . . . Of proverbes, than ye han herd bifoore,
Included in this little treatise here,. . . . . . . . . . . Comprehended in this litel tretys heere,

I ask, said he, though to your harm and grief,. . . . .I axe thee, quod he, though it thee greeve,
Of your religion and of your belief.. . . . . . . . . . . . Of thy religioun and of thy bileeve.
You have begun your questions foolishly,. . . . . . . .Ye han bigonne youre question folily,
Said she, who would two answers so include. . . . .Quod she, that wolden two answeres conclude
In one demand; you asked me ignorantly.. . . . . . . .In o demande; ye axed lewedly.

(from General Prologue (lines 437-39), Melibeus Prologue (36-39) and 2nd Nun’s Tale (307-311))

quote:

Originally posted by rubyhatchet:
, I'd like to find something that means including and was in use by the 1350s. Any ideas?

subsuming ? but first used in 1535, rather later than you specify.