Middle English Dictionary Entry

engreǧǧen v.
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Entry Info

Definitions (Senses and Subsenses)

Note: Cp. agreggen.
1.
(a) To burden (someone), to oppress; (b) to make (a wrong) worse, to aggravate; (c) to harden (the heart); (d) of a disease: to worsen; of a tyrant: to grow more severe.

Supplemental Materials (draft)

Note: Sense (d) added. Gilte Legende glossary: "engregged v. pa. 'became worse'"; "engroged v. pa. 'oppressed'"--a previously unattested intransitive use. In the GLeg.Urban example, 'engroged' is treated here in MED as an erroneous variant of 'engregged,' for want of a better option, but in fact none of the English readings seem adequate to either the context or the French source ('went mad; lost his mind'); and the Hrl and Lamb readings look suspiciously like weak attempts to make sense of an unintelligible and perhaps corrupt 'engroged'. If the translator had written 'raged' or 'enraged' (the former very common and the latter found in this intransitive sense as early as Berners' Huon of Burdeux), the sense would be satisfactory and the textual history plausible. If the translator mistook French forsener 'go mad' for farsir 'stuff oneself' engorged would have been a possible, if unlikely, rendering (found in English from the turn of the sixteenth century).