Talk:crowned

RFV discussion: May–November 2022

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crowned

Rfv-sense: great, excessive, supreme. Chaucer quote is wanted, but he's Middle English (enm), not English (en) Zumbacool (talk) 21:46, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Chaucer used the phrase "crowned malice", but I'm not sure this is what is being sought. 98.170.164.88 23:54, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The 1934 translation by John Urban Nicolson has “supreme malice”,^[1] which may have contributed to the notion that this is a sense of crowned. The American Dictionary and Cyclopedia of 1896 even has “consummate, consummated, perfect”,^[2] using Chaucer as a quotation. Methinks they are over-interpreting Chaucer’s intention. Earlier this was glossed as “sovereign malice”,^[3] which in the context seems a better fit to me, with sovereign in the sense of “not subject to a higher power”. Anyway, Chaucer’s ME use appears to be the origin of the disputed E sense, which may be dictionary-only.  --Lambiam 13:40, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

This is OED sense 2 of crowned, adj:

2. Unfailingly effective, perfect, total; (also) completed, consummated. Now rare.

It gives the Chaucer quote but also (verified except where noted):

• Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy [translating (quoting?) "Ælianus Montaltus"]: "a crowned medicine"
• Robert Barret in A Companion for Midwives: "the crown'd Act of Conception"
• Samuel Richardson in his mammoth novel Clarissa: "the crowned act"
• Emmeline Stuart-Wortley in the third canto of her poem Visionary, published separately and which I have been unable to locate online (or in any library near me): "Their crowned truths"
• Ellen Maria Huntington Gates in The Treasures of Kurium: "That the crownèd truth advances."

Also, searching for "a crowned success" gives quite a few hits on google. This seems like a collocution but since it seems so much more common than other uses of crowned in this manner perhaps it is something more? In any case, Chaucer quote, the verifiable cites above, and one book use of "crowned success" have been added to the citations page. Is this enough? Winthrop23 (talk) 16:46, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

• RFV-passed added to the entry GreyishWorm (talk) 09:44, 1 November 2022 (UTC)