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Jerzy Wełna
University of Warsaw
Email: jawelna at uw dot edu dot pl

On the origin of evil and its competition with bad in Middle English

The paper discusses (1) the phonological evolution of the Old English adjective yfel ‘evil’ from Old to Middle English and (2) its rivalry with the adjective badde ‘bad’, of obscure origin. The competition between the two was won by bad, which replaced evil as the semantic antithesis of the high frequency adjective good. The principal aim of the present study is to establish chronological and geographical conditioning of that competition.

The complicated development yfel > evil is explained as either a reflection of vowel lengthening with substantial lowering [i (< y) > e:] (first Northern, later Southumbrian), a specific part of Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening (MEOSL; 13 c.; e.g. Luick 1940) or, alternatively, as the introduction of a dialectal form from Kent, where [y(:) yielded [e(:)]; cf. Jordan-Crook (1974: 66), a rather unlikely hypothesis. For Kentish two types of the change have been postulated, depending on whether the form was evel [E:v@l] (< e < y) or [e:v@l], from earlier [ivel] (< i < y]. (cf. Jacobsson (1962: 122).

The spelling of evil exhibits a lot of variation. Consequently the variants analysed can be split into several classes depending on the value of the initial vowel: (1) yfel (OE), (2) uvel (both with [ü](:)]), (3) ifel(e) ivel(e) (with [ü] unrounded to [i]), and (4) evel evil, with long close [e:], an effect of MEOSL. The competition between evil and bad began roughly at the time when the last type (with [e:]) became dominant. Apart from these, specific forms with j-insertion are found in Kentish (yevel jevil etc.), while rare forms with initial h- or containing diphthongal spellings (eovel eivil) appear in dialects. One of the aims of the present paper will be to localise such variants in Middle English manuscripts.

The evidence for the study comes from numerous Middle English texts and standard electronic sources, like OED, DOE, MED, Literature Online, etc.

References