“Hende”: A Handy Middle English Adjective

The Middle English adjective hende typically describes knights and ladies at court, and has thus come to signify courtesy, grace, kindness, and myriad other positive attributes associated with nobility in romances. However, its inverted function in fabliaux, namely in regard to “hende Nicholas” in Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale and “Dame Sirith the hende” in the early Middle English Dame Sirith, invites us to question whether the same glosses can aptly apply across genres. Arguing that Old and Middle French provide the keys to this philological quandary, this paper investigates the numerous definitions for hende, along with its varied appearances throughout a number of medieval texts, in order to suggest a new approach for understanding the word’s nuanced semantic versatility.