Philobiblon

A passage you’ll recognise from William Tyndale’s English Bible, but it does some interesting things with gender:

“In the begynnynge was the worde, and the worde was with God: and the word was God. The same was in the begynnynge wyth God. All things were made by it and with out it was made nothinge that was made.”

By the time of King James, however, God had suddenly become male.

The disputes between Tyndale and Sir Thomas More yielded even more colourful language. Among their lost words:

“A gorbelly was a fat man, often to be found in a sottys hoffe, a drinking den, where he became sowe-drunke, and a nodypoll was a blockhead who was often apyssche, or fantastically foolish. A prym was a pretty girl, and a galyarde a high spirited young man, with an eye for caterwaywynge, lechery.”

From B. Moynahan, William Tyndale: If God Spare My Life. A Story of Martyrdom, Betrayal and the English Bible, p. 390, p. 192

I do like nodypoll – wonder if it could be resurrected?