Lewid/Lewd

Abstract

The semantic path traced from lewid to lewd is clear. Very early, as early as Bede’s Historia (890), laewde meant “lay” as opposed to “clerical.” This distinction in estate was, in theory at least, based on learning, so that an equally good definition of lewed in the Middle Ages is “untaught in Latin.”¹ The celebrated Latin “neck verse” saved a man from hanging as a felon, taking him out of the jurisdiction of local secular authorities. The privilege granted to Latin is enforced in scholarly circles as late as 1564 in the stipulation that “nothing might be said openly to the University [Cambridge] in English,” even by the Queen.² Sometimes the distinction between lerned and lewed was marked in obvious ways, as Mandeville’s Travels has it, “Thai hafe thaire crownes shauen, the clerkes rownde and the lawed men foure cornerd” (13.60). Middle English translators use lewed to render Latin “laicus” (Medulla), “illitteratus,” “agramatus,” “inscius,” “ignarus,” and “inscientia” (Promptorium Parvulorum). Lewed in this sense turns up as a medieval modesty topos: Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love has “Though my book be leude, the cause with which I am stered, and for whom I ought it doon, noble … ben bothe” (49.110), and one of the Paston letters reads: “Hold me escused of my lewde, rude wrytyng” (2.147). Medical treatises refer to outsiders in their field as lewed.

She raised the muddy hem of her skirts some inches and spread her knees and the gesture was slight but very lewd, a whore’s gesture.

Barry Unsworth, Morality Play