Glossary of terms in Forman’s and Napier’s casebooks

band	bond, in the sense of security or bail
boy	may mean son or male child, but more often means young male servant or apprentice
brought abed of/with	delivered of (a child)
burdeus, burdeux	Bordeaux
bwy	buy
cast up	vomit
chile	child
cossen, cozen	cheat, swindle (as a verb)
cours, course	menstrual period
cousin	any relation by blood or marriage beyond the immediate nuclear family
diz	short for ‘disease’, i.e. any medical condition (or anything construed by the practitioner as a medical condition)
docters, the	the London College of Physicians, qualified medical practitioners with authority to grant licences to other physicians, and who repeatedly attempted to ban the unlicensed Forman from practising
forspoken	bewitched
frantic, frantick	frenzied, delirious
gossip to	be godparent to
halek, halk	Forman’s private code-word for ‘had/have/is having/has had/will have sex with’ or ‘the sex act’
holland	a type of coarse linen fabric
holpen	helped
hora (often abbreviated to ‘h.’ or ‘hor’)	literally ‘at the hour of’, or in modern English simply ‘at’
Indians, the	the East Indies, i.e. the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia, or the West Indies, i.e. the Americas. It is clear from the context that Forman uses this term to refer to the geographical areas, not their inhabitants.
kinsman, kinswoman	basically the same as ‘cousin’ above, but gender-specific
lying in	in labour or expecting a child imminently
maid	may mean female servant, virgin and/or unmarried woman
man	either ‘man’ in the modern sense or ‘male servant’
matrix	womb
mi., min.	abbreviation for medieval Latin ‘minuta’ (minutes)
pocks, pox	either smallpox or venereal disease
questo	question (or, in Latin, quaestio)
quid inde	literally, Latin for ‘then what?’. A formula used by Forman to mean ‘what will the outcome/consequence be?’, sometimes expanded as ‘quid inde accidet’, ‘quid inde evenit’, ‘quid inde sequitur’, meaning ‘what will happen next?’ or ‘what will follow?’.
reins	kidneys
sectum	suit, in any of the senses of lawsuit, marriage suit, or petition for favour or preferment from an authority figure
sprite	spirit, in the sense of supernatural agency
suet	suit, in the same senses as ‘sectum’ above
turba	impending trouble of a non-medical nature
walles, walls	Wales
wench, wentch	young woman of relatively low social status
wher	sometimes means ‘where’, but in Forman’s notes normally means ‘whether’
wickes	Forman’s habitual spelling of ‘weeks’
with child	pregnant
wordl, wordle	Forman’s habitual spellings of ‘world’
yerland	Ireland

Document last modified: 12 January 2012

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Glossary of terms in Forman’s and Napier’s casebooks