#lexicography
So I uh, like reading dictionaries, and I happened to find this in an ASL dictionary, and
Middle English “[word]” (30 alternative forms)
Sometimes it really is just unstable orthography, but other times, often enough, people seem to forget that Middle English had no fewer dialects than Old English or modern British English, and in many cases it might be more informative to talk of something like “Middle Northumbrian”, “Middle Coventrian” etc.
(For that matter I keep wondering how much of the orthographic variation is due to different preferences between writers; clearly not all, but probably some.)
