For those who are savvy about the Ormulum, new insights await as to bread, crumbs, and related matters. Details are in the study:
“Bread, Crumbs, and Related Matters in the Ormulum,” Nils-Lennart Johannesson [pictured here], In Selected Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX), pp. 69-82. 2006. The author, at Stockholm University, begins by explaining:
“The lexical field of BREAD in the language of the Ormulum is made up of four lexemes, namely BRÆD, LAF, KECHELL, and *CRUMME (only attested in the the plural form crummess). Orm’s language, just like Modern English, had different words for bread as a substance (BRÆD) and as a unit of production (LAF). Old English, by contrast, had only the single word HL F corresponding, just like Latin PANIS, to both of these.”
Here’s detail from the study:
