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Agloss is a brief notation, especially amarginal orinterlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different.
A collection of glosses is aglossary. A collection of medieval legal glosses, made byglossators, is called anapparatus. The compilation of glosses into glossaries was the beginning oflexicography, and the glossaries so compiled were in fact the firstdictionaries. In modern times a glossary, as opposed to a dictionary, is typically found in a text as an appendix of specialized terms that the typical reader may find unfamiliar. Also, satirical explanations of words and events are called glosses. TheGerman Romantic movement used the expression of gloss for poems commenting on a given other piece of poetry, often in the SpanishDécima style.
Glosses were originally notes made in the margin or between the lines of a text in aclassical language; the meaning of a word or passage is explained by the gloss. As such, glosses vary in thoroughness and complexity, from simple marginal notations of words one reader found difficult or obscure, to interlineartranslations of a text with cross-references to similar passages. Todayparenthetical explanations inscientific writing andtechnical writing are also often called glosses.Hyperlinks to aglossary sometimes supersede them. In East Asian languages,ruby characters are glosses that indicate the pronunciation oflogographicChinese characters.
Starting in the 14th century, agloze in the English language was a marginal note or explanation, borrowed from Frenchglose, which comes frommedieval Latinglōsa,classicalglōssa, meaning an obsolete or foreign word that needs explanation.[1] Later, it came to mean the explanation itself. The Latin word comes fromGreekγλῶσσα'tongue, language, obsolete or foreign word'.[2][3] In the 16th century, the spelling was refashioned asgloss to reflect the original Greek form more closely.[4]
Glosses and other marginal notes were a primary format used in medieval Biblicaltheology and were studied and memorized for their own merit. Many Biblical passages came to be associated with a particular gloss, whose truth was taken to be scriptural. Indeed, in one case, it is generally reckoned that an early gloss explicating the doctrine of the Trinity made its way into the Scriptural text itself, in the passage known as the "three heavenly witnesses" or theComma Johanneum, which is present in the Vulgate Latin and the third and later editions of the GreekTextus Receptus collated by Erasmus (the first two editions excluded it for lack of manuscript evidence), but is absent from all modern critical reconstructions of the New Testament text, such asWestcott and Hort,Tischendorf, andNestle-Aland.
In the medieval legal tradition, the glosses onRoman law andCanon law created standards of reference, so-calledsedes materiae 'seat of the matter'. Incommon law countries, the term "judicial gloss" refers to what is considered an authoritative or "official"interpretation of a statute or regulation by ajudge.[5] Judicial glosses are often very important in avoiding contradictions between statutes, and determining theconstitutionality of various provisions of law.
A gloss, orglosa, is a verse in traditionalIberian literature and music which follows and comments on a refrain (the "mote"). See alsovillancico.
Glosses are of some importance inphilology, especially if one language—usually, the language of the author of the gloss—has left few texts of its own. TheReichenau Glosses, for example, gloss theLatinVulgateBible in an early form of one of theRomance languages, and as such give insight into lateVulgar Latin at a time when that language was not often written down. A series of glosses in theOld English language to Latin Bibles give us a running translation of Biblical texts in that language; seeOld English Bible translations. Glosses of Christian religious texts are also important for our knowledge ofOld Irish. Glosses frequently shed valuable light on the vocabulary of otherwise little attested languages; they are less reliable forsyntax, because many times the glosses follow the word order of the original text, and translate itsidioms literally.
Inlinguistics, a simple gloss in running text may be marked by quotation marks and follow thetranscription of a foreign word to serve as atranslation.Single quotes are a widely used convention.[6] For example:
A longer or more complex transcription may rely upon aninterlinear gloss. Such a gloss may be placed between atext and its translation when it is important to understand thestructure of the language being glossed, and not just the overall meaning of the passage.
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Sign languages are typically transcribed word-for-word by means of a gloss written in the predominant oral language in all capitals; for example,American Sign Language andAuslan would be written in English.Prosody is often glossed as superscript words, with its scope indicated by brackets.
[I LIKE]NEGATIVE [WHAT?]RHETORICAL, GARLIC.
"I don't like garlic."
Purefingerspelling is usually indicated by hyphenation. Fingerspelled words that have been lexicalized (that is, fingerspelling sequences that have entered the sign language as linguistic units and that often have slight modifications) are indicated with a hash. For example,W-I-K-I indicates a simple fingerspelled word, but#JOB indicates a lexicalized unit, produced likeJ-O-B, but faster, with a barely perceptibleO and turning the "B" hand palm side in, unlike a regularly fingerspelled "B".
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