Headword

The area ‘headword’ contains the core item of our database – the Old English plant name. It is recorded in the attested spelling of the Dicitonary of Old English (for letters A-G), all other headwords are adjusted to these guidelines (e.g. āc, bēo-wyrt).

In the main entry the lemma is described with basic linguistic features: ‘Word-class’ specifies the part of speech, i.e. noun, adjective, verb, past participle, or affix. In most cases the gender (m., n., f., and combinations) and declension (a, ō, i, u, n, r, s, root etc., with subtypes) of the Old English noun can be reconstructed, a ’?’ indicates a doubtful solution or that a reconstruction was not possible. This entry also gives a count of the occurrences available in the the DOEPN (This may vary from the count provided by the DOE! If so, we refer to this fact in the comment.). It provides information on spelling and morphological variants and a summary list of the Latin lemmata associated with the OE plant name; these are collected from glosses or are explicitly mentioned as sources or equivalents in the Old English medico-botanical texts, etc.