The common dialect adverb nobbut, only, nothing but, lit. not but, occurs in Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. When Sir Gawayne is looking for ‘þe grene chapelle’, to his disgust he finds that it consists of a hollow mound, ‘nobot an old caue,’ where, he says:
... myȝt about mid-nyȝt,
Þe dele his matynnes telle!
ll. 2187, 2188.
Adjectives now disused in Standard English
But to come to our second category, namely, old adjectives now disused in standard English, examples are: argh (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Yks. Lin.), timorous, apprehensive, O.E. earh (earg), cowardly (cp. Germ. arg), ‘His hert arwe as an hare,’ Rob. of Gloucester, Chron., c. 1300; brant (Nhb. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.), steep, high, also erect, and hence proud, pompous, e.g. as brant as a besom, O.E. brant, bront. Brantwood on the eastern margin of Coniston Lake, the residence of Ruskin, was so called from the brant, or steep wood which rises behind it. Dern (Sc. Nhb. Chs.), secret, obscure, also dreary, dark, O.E. dyrne, derne, cp. ‘For derne love of thee lemman, I spille,’ Milleres Tale, l. 92; elenge (Ken. Sur. Sus.), solitary, lonely, tedious, O.E. ǣlenge, tedious, tiresome, lit. very long; fremd (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Lin. Nhp.), strange, foreign, not of kin, O.E. fremde, foreign, cp. Germ. fremd. In M.E. this word is often coupled with sibb, which latter word has the opposite meaning of related, akin, as for example in the lines from the Moral Ode, c. 1200:
Wis is þat him seolue biþenkþ þe hwile he mot libbe,
Vor sone willeþ him for-yete þe fremede and þe sibbe.
ll. 34, 35.
‘Sib’ and ‘Lief’