The following XML and HTML files are designed to facilitate linking to the online version of the Middle English Dictionary by providing lists of MED headwords paired with the ID number of the corresponding MED entry. The format of these lists keeps changing as convenience, experiment, whim, and the needs of particular users have dictated. The most recent versions are straightforward excerpts from the raw XML of the MED files themselves with only minimal alteration.
Note: Every version of these lists is based on the working copy of MED accessible to the editors. They are all therefore to some agree 'ahead' of the files available in the online MED as hosted in the Middle English Compendium. I.e., they may include entries, perhaps many entries, not yet in the online MED, or may mark some entries as 'deprecated' (flagged for eventual deletion) that are still alive and kicking in the online MED. Because they reflect current work, they are also to some degree obsolete as soon as they are created, since current efforts produce a new entry roughly every day or two.
Given an MED entry ID, a URL can always be constructed for it on this simple pattern: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/[MED id], e.g. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED7
Headwords, variant spellings, and IDs. The same format as the current list, but a year older.
Headwords, variant spellings, and IDs. The same format as the current list, but two years older.
Headword list with IDs. This version is in crude HTML, formatted as a basic <dl> (dictionary list). This should display in most browsers, but can also readily be dismantled for use as input to other processes, since the MED IDs are unambiguously encoded in <CODE> tags, headwords in <B> tags, part-of-speech designations in <I> tags; the 'definition' half of the list (<dd>), readily removable, contains a bare list of alternative spellings, from the 'alsos' lists displayed in the dictionary. Non-keyboard characters are encoded as numeric character references.
Note: this list includes 88 entries that have been flagged for deletion ("deprecated" in computer parlance); those displayed for the first time in red (and encoded with <span style="color:red">)
The following list represents a snapshot of the eMED after initial editorial revision undertaken under the NEH-funded MED renovation project.
This is the eMED as current from roughly 2000 through 2016, substantially identical to the print Dictionary, though with many low-level improvements, especially to MS shelfmarks and dates.
Both files are in simple XML, with a declared doctype pointing to a simple dtd (medhed.dtd), and invoke a very simple stylesheet (medheds.css) which should allow them to be displayed in most modern browsers [but tested only in Firefox], or downloaded and processed further.
Very much a work in progress, incomplete, and rife with both errors and inconsistencies, we maintain a file that maps each MED headword to the nearest Modern English equivalent equivalent -- with 'equivalent' meaning equivalence of form and history, not of meaning. Despite its flaws, we use this to populate the search for 'modern English equivalent,' available as an option in the online MED. The most recent version is available HERE.
The online MED, despite numerous changes, is still essentially the same dictionary as that published in print by the University of Michigan Press. And many features of the eMED are therefore best explained by the conclusive revised edition of the Dictionary's Plan and Bibliography (Robert E. Lewis and Mary Jane Williams, 2007). The essential portions of that text are therefore made available here in pdf (i.e. the 'Plan' portion, as opposed to the 'Bibliography,' the latter having been supplanted by the online Bibliography for use with the online Dictionary).
Note: the University of Michigan several years ago (Sept 2021) replaced Box.com with Dropbox.com for purposes of institutional file sharing. Any links from before that date are now obsolete.
The MED entry lists and other ancillary files are hosted on file-sharing sites in public folders for free downloading.
The raw files of the Corpus of Middle English are also available for free downloading, with no restrictions on use or reuse, also on Dropbox, in a similar public folder (with an identical backup copy on Box). The copyright of the MED and Bibliography is held by the Regents of the University of Michigan, so the raw XML of those resources is generally not available for public download, though exceptions can be made for specific projects or collabortions, on request. Those wishing to download the entire 'Corpus' are directed to the folder called CME_zipped. Individual files, if those are sought, can be found scattered among the other folders, but the 'zipped' folder is the easiest way to go. A few of the files (those found in CME_from_OTA) were received originally from the Oxford Text Archive under a sharealike license which we continue to honor via the license announcement found in that folder.
We try always to be available at mec-info@umich.edu