02-12-2018, 03:46 AM
Helmut has made a really good point.
It was quite common for medieval scribes to code entire phrases into common acronyms and abbreviations. If it's an acronym, it might superficially look like a word. Then when you consider that many scribes didn't use capital letters (or used them sparingly), then it becomes even harder to recognize them out of context.
Some of the "weird" stuff that almost looks like words might be phrases. Weird things like pbren/ubren (116v) might not be a word at all, it might be an abbreviation phrase, as might some of the text on 17r.
It was quite common for medieval scribes to code entire phrases into common acronyms and abbreviations. If it's an acronym, it might superficially look like a word. Then when you consider that many scribes didn't use capital letters (or used them sparingly), then it becomes even harder to recognize them out of context.
Some of the "weird" stuff that almost looks like words might be phrases. Weird things like pbren/ubren (116v) might not be a word at all, it might be an abbreviation phrase, as might some of the text on 17r.
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