In pursuit of otol

[geoffreycaveney]

otol is one fine test specimen for any substitution "language solution". Another one is aror sheey (the stuff that appears in line with plain text in f116v).

Just for fun, using the ME correspondence table for that, we get "ir[o]ur thee*", where asterisk stands for y (not present in the table). Not sure if that makes any sense.

Middle English irour - "anger, wrath"
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Middle English thē - "thee, to thee, for thee" (2.sg.obj. pronoun)

Anton, I now realize I was mistaken about the second word, EVA [sheey], since my Middle English correspondence table at the time (which you also used) was treating EVA [y] as unknown, which meant in practice a "wild card", null, or "anything" value, which I now see was mistaken. As I hope you have seen in my recent posts in the Middle English theory thread, actually [y] = "K", where this letter may represent "k/c/g(h)", possibly along with an unwritten vowel in some places. (I found the "-gh" value in the ME word "thurgh" ("through") in the first line of the Voynich ms.) The facility of this character to represent "k", "c", "g", "gh", along with possible unwritten vowels in some places, begins to help to explain how this character can appear in as many as almost 44% of all words in the entire Voynich manuscript.

[shol], the actual reading of [sheey] is "theeK". Here once again as elsewhere we must rely on reading the word backwards, especially since it is the last word of the phrase: "Keeth". In this case, the interpretation is Middle English "geth", which is an alternate past participle form of the verb "geten" (i.e., "get"). The Middle English Compendium entry for "geten" ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) cites the various past participle forms of this verb as follows: "ppl. gē̆te(n, igē̆te(n, gē̆tten, igette, gē̆t, getein, (?) getẹ̄, geth, gheten, ikete & giten & gōte(n, igōte(n, gotte(n, gōtǒun, gōthen & ʒeten" [emphasis added]. The entry also gives the following explanatory etymological note: "The p. & p. ppl. have been affected by various analogies, both within the paradigm and with other ME verbs like bēren, stēlen." 

You will also find among the many particular precise meanings of "geten" (same entry and link above) such senses as "suffer (blows, death, shame, etc.)", among many others. [shol], the actual meaning of this phrase EVA [aror sheey] is "irour geth", meaning "[having] suffered/earned/begotten wrath", likely part of a phrase (the other words of which are presumably written in the other script on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) such as "thou/he/ye/they  hast/hath/have  suffered/earned/begotten  wrath." 

yerffoe[y]