Old French‐English Dictionary

Old French still lives with us: in our vocabulary, of course, with numerous words imported into English following the Norman Conquest, and more directly as in the motto of the Order of the Garter, Honi soit qui mal y pense. Sure enough, honi is here defined: “worthy of hate, scorn; dishonourable, shameful, disgraceful”. Interestingly, in more modern times Old French returned to give us a new English word. When Dante Gabriel Rossetti was translating the poetry of Villon he could find no suitable term for antan (où sont les neiges d'antan?) so coined the new word “yesteryear”....