Gloss (Annotation): Marginal and Interlinear Notes in Medieval Manuscripts
A {{gloss}} is a brief explanation of a difficult word or passage, written between the lines (interlinear) or in the margin (marginal) of a text. The medieval practice of glossing Latin works with vernacular equivalents preserved valuable evidence of early languages and gave rise to the first {{glossary}} collections.
In textual scholarship, a gloss is a brief note of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may render the hard word in the same language or translate it into the reader's own tongue. Glosses took two main physical forms in medieval manuscripts: interlinear glosses, written in the space between the lines directly above the word being explained, and marginal glosses, written in the page margins. They ranged from a single vernacular word jotted over a hard Latin term to extended commentary with cross-references. The medieval practice was driven by the dominance of Latin. A scribe or student reading a difficult Latin text — often Scripture, a classical author, or a legal code — would write the Old English, Old Irish, or early Romance equivalent above or beside hard words. Because these vernacular notes survive from periods when those languages were otherwise barely written down, glosses are a major source for historical linguistics: collections such as the Old English and Old Irish glosses preserve some of the earliest recorded forms of those languages. Glosses had a natural tendency to migrate from the margins into standalone reference works. When the notes scattered through a manuscript (or across many manuscripts) were gathered into a single list, the result was a glossary — a collection of glosses, and one of the direct ancestors of the modern dictionary. In law, glosses on Roman and canon law were compiled by the Glossators into an organized apparatus, establishing standard interpretive readings. See Etymology of 'Gloss' and 'Glossary': From Greek 'Glossa' (Tongue) for the word's history and The Glossators and the Glossa Ordinaria: Reviving Roman Law in Medieval Bologna for the legal tradition. The practice persists today. Modern technical and scientific writing uses parenthetical glosses to explain terms inline, and in linguistics a word gloss is conventionally set off with single quotation marks (for example, 'moose' is glossed 'twig eater'). Sign-language transcription represents signs with all-capital English glosses.