Gloss

Gloss (Gr. glōssa, 'language'), an explanation of such difficulties in a text as are merely verbal, and not relating to the matter itself. The word was originally applied to any obsolete, foreign, provincial, dialect, or technical word, or use of a word, collections of such being called glossai. In the Alexandrian period these became common, their subjects the works of Homer and other early poets. Of such glossarians may be named Philetus of Cos, Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus, Crates of Mallos, Apion, Ælius Herodianus, Hesychius, Photius, Zonaras, and Suidas. Most of the Rabbinical writers have done the same work for the Hebrew text; so that it would be difficult to name any in particular as Hebrew glossatores. The chief glossatores of the Latin Vulgate are the celebrated Walafridus Strabus, in the 9th century, and Anselm of Laon, who continued Walafrid's work (circa 1100). In Roman and canon law the practice of introducing glosses was of early origin, and probably was an imitation of the biblical glosses. Among jurists the gloss was not purely verbal, but regarded the true interpretation of the law, and in some cases it was held to be of equal authority with the text itself. From the position which it occupied in the MS., being generally written between the lines of the text and on the margin, it was called glossa interlinearis. The gloss of the Roman law is written in very pure Latinity, that of the canon law in the Latinity of the medieval school.