Brief marginal notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text
A
gloss
is a brief notation, especially a
marginal
or
interlinear
one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different.
A collection of glosses is a
glossary
.
A collection of medieval legal glosses, made by
glossators
, is called an
apparatus
. The compilation of glosses into glossaries was the beginning of
lexicography
, and the glossaries so compiled were in fact the first
dictionaries
. In modern times a glossary, as opposed to a dictionary, is typically found in a text as an appendix of specialized terms that the typical reader may find unfamiliar. Also, satirical explanations of words and events are called glosses. The
German Romantic movement
used the expression of gloss for poems commenting on a given other piece of poetry, often in the Spanish
Decima
style.
Glosses were originally notes made in the margin or between the lines of a text in a
classical language
; the meaning of a word or passage is explained by the gloss. As such, glosses vary in thoroughness and complexity, from simple marginal notations of words one reader found difficult or obscure, to interlinear
translations
of a text with cross references to similar passages. Today
parenthetical
explanations in
scientific writing
and
technical writing
are also often called glosses.
Hyperlinks
to a
glossary
sometimes supersede them. In East Asian languages,
ruby characters
are glosses that indicate the pronunciation of
logographic
Chinese characters
.
Etymology
[
edit
]
Starting in the 14th century, a
gloze
in the English language was a marginal note or explanation, borrowed from French
glose
, which comes from medieval Latin
gl?sa
, classical
gl?ssa
, meaning an obsolete or foreign word that needs explanation.
[1]
Later, it came to mean the explanation itself. The Latin word comes from Greek
γλ?σσα
'tongue, language, obsolete or foreign word'.
[2]
[3]
In the 16th century, the spelling was refashioned as
gloss
to reflect the original Greek form more closely.
[4]
In theology
[
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]
Glosses and other marginal notes were a primary format used in medieval Biblical
theology
and were studied and memorized for their own merit. Many Biblical passages came to be associated with a particular gloss, whose truth was taken to be scriptural. Indeed, in one case, it is generally reckoned that an early gloss explicating the doctrine of the Trinity made its way into the Scriptural text itself, in the passage known as the "three heavenly witnesses" or the
Comma Johanneum
, which is present in the Vulgate Latin and the third and later editions of the Greek
Textus Receptus
collated by Erasmus (the first two editions excluded it for lack of manuscript evidence), but is absent from all modern critical reconstructions of the New Testament text, such as
Westcott and Hort
,
Tischendorf
, and
Nestle-Aland
.
In law
[
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]
In the medieval legal tradition, the glosses on
Roman law
and
Canon law
created standards of reference, so-called
sedes materiae
'seat of the matter'. In
common law
countries, the term "judicial gloss" refers to what is considered an authoritative or "official"
interpretation
of a statute or regulation by a
judge
.
[5]
Judicial glosses are often very important in avoiding contradictions between statutes, and determining the
constitutionality
of various provisions of law.
In literature
[
edit
]
A gloss, or
glosa
, is a verse in traditional
Iberian
literature and music which follows and comments on a refrain (the "
mote
"). See also
villancico
.
In philology
[
edit
]
Glosses are of some importance in
philology
, especially if one language—usually, the language of the author of the gloss—has left few texts of its own. The
Reichenau Glosses
, for example, gloss the
Latin
Vulgate
Bible
in an early form of one of the
Romance languages
, and as such give insight into late
Vulgar Latin
at a time when that language was not often written down. A series of glosses in the
Old English language
to Latin Bibles give us a running translation of Biblical texts in that language; see
Old English Bible translations
. Glosses of Christian religious texts are also important for our knowledge of
Old Irish
. Glosses frequently shed valuable light on the vocabulary of otherwise little attested languages; they are less reliable for
syntax
, because many times the glosses follow the word order of the original text, and translate its
idioms
literally.
In linguistics
[
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]
In
linguistics
, a simple gloss in running text may be marked by quotation marks and follow the transcription of a foreign word. Single quotes are a widely used convention.
[6]
For example:
- A
Cossack
longboat is called a
chaika
'seagull'.
- The
moose
gains its name from the
Algonquian
mus
or
mooz
('twig eater').
A longer or more complex transcription may rely upon an
interlinear gloss
. Such a gloss may be placed between a
text
and its translation when it is important to understand the structure of the language being glossed, and not just the overall meaning of the passage.
Glossing sign languages
[
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]
Sign languages
are typically transcribed word-for-word by means of a gloss written in the predominant oral language in all capitals; for example,
American Sign Language
and
Auslan
would be written in English.
Prosody
is often glossed as superscript words, with its scope indicated by brackets.
[I LIKE]
NEGATIVE
[WHAT?]
RHETORICAL
, GARLIC.
"I don't like garlic."
Pure
fingerspelling
is usually indicated by hyphenation. Fingerspelled words that have been lexicalized (that is, fingerspelling sequences that have entered the sign language as linguistic units and that often have slight modifications) are indicated with a hash. For example,
W-I-K-I
indicates a simple fingerspelled word, but
#JOB
indicates a lexicalized unit, produced like
J-O-B
, but faster, with a barely perceptible
O
and turning the "B" hand palm side in, unlike a regularly fingerspelled "B".
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Charlton T. Lewis
, Charles Short,
A Latin Dictionary
,
s.v.
- ^
Henry George Liddell
,
Robert Scott
,
Henry Stuart Jones
,
A Greek?English Lexicon
,
s.v.
- ^
Oxford English Dictionary
, First Edition,
s.v.
- ^
Oxford English Dictionary
, First Edition,
s.v.
- ^
Black's Law Dictionary
, 7th ed.
- ^
Campbell, Lyle (1998).
Historical Linguistics: An Introduction
(1 ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p.
xvii
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Meinolf Schumacher: "…der kann den texst und och die gloß. Zum Wortgebrauch von 'Text' und 'Glosse' in deutschen Dichtungen des Spatmittelalters." In '
Textus' im Mittelalter. Komponenten und Situationen des Wortgebrauchs im schriftsemantischen Feld
, edited by Ludolf Kuchenbuch and Uta Kleine, 207?27, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006 (
PDF
).
External links
[
edit
]
- The dictionary definition of
gloss
at Wiktionary