Vord by vord

These are short studies of words from the Voynich lexicon. I am not concerned with "hands", "scribes" or with Language A and Language B; I am only interested in tracing the distribution of words according to the content of the sections as indicated by the illustrations. The words I choose to study in this way are typically words with a small-to-medium count. Words that occur frequently may be all-purpose in nature, and rare words may be spelling mistakes. Instead I look at words with about 3 to 20 clear instances.

Nor am I interested in compiling statistics along these lines. There are already many statistical studies. Instead, I am only interested in the lexicon - the list of words (vords) that might be specific to particular topics and themes. I take sample vords and see how they behave.

My overall purpose is to try to learn the Voynich language. You don't learn English or any new language by compiling statistics on it. You learn it by becoming familiar with key vocabulary, for a start. Some examples with short notes:

 QOKED

A word in the nymph lexicon.

QOKECHY

A word in the stellar lexicon. It concerns the star correspondences in the final section of the manuscript. It is a Grove word, i.e. remove the q = okechy.

QOKECHEDY

A word in the nymph and stellar lexicons. It concerns the correspondences between nymphs and stars. (Grove word.)

QOKCHDY

A word belonging to the herbal lexicon. This word appears to be specifically concerned with the plant that is depicted on page f50r. (Grove word.)

QOKAIN

A word in the nymph lexicon. It is word that concerns the nympha.

KAIR

A word belonging to the stellar lexicon.

KEODY

A word from the herbal lexicon.

I am aware that vords may not be words and that vords are found in various combinations and permutations. In the first instance, though, I study them vord by vord regardless of whether they are linguistic, symbolic or whatever. In this I am assuming that vords (strings of glyphs separated by spaces) are meaningful, distinct units.

R. B.