A good example of a dialect word is _gantry_ or _gauntree_, a wooden
stand for barrels, known in varying forms in many dialects. It is
rightly derived, in the _E.D.D._, from _gantier_, which must have been
an A.F. (Anglo-French) form, though now only preserved in the Rouchi
dialect, spoken on the borders of France and Belgium, and nearly
allied to Norman; in fact, M. Hecart, the author of the _Dictionnaire_
_Rouchi-Fran{c,}ais_, says he had heard the word in Normandy, and he
gives a quotation for it from Olivier Basselin, a poet who lived
in Normandy at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Parisian
form is _chantier_, which Cotgrave explains as "a Gauntrey... for
hogs-heads to stand on." Here is a clear example of a word which is of
Norman, or A.F., origin; and there must be many more such of which the
A.F. form is lost. There is no greater literary disgrace to England
than the fact that there is no reasonable Dictionary in existence of
Anglo-French, though it contains hundreds of highly important legal
terms. It ought, in fact, to have been compiled before either the
_English Dialect Dictionary_ or the _New English Dictionary_, both
of which have suffered from the lack of it.
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