What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1922 work on Middle English vocabulary?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1922 work on Middle English vocabulary was titled A Middle English Vocabulary.

Tolkien prepared the book with E.V. Gordon as a companion to their edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was published in 1922 and helped students understand the language of the Middle English poem.

The work reflects Tolkien’s professional life as a philologist before his fiction made him internationally famous. He studied how words changed across time and how language carried clues about the people and cultures that used it.

This early title is sometimes overlooked because Tolkien’s novels dominate popular discussion. Yet his technical study of historical English was central to his creative method: the languages and names of Middle-earth were built with the care of a scholar, not invented as random collections of unusual sounds.