"Estourdi (étourdi), dulled, amazed, astonished, dizzie-headed, or whose head seemes very much troubled; (hence) also, heedlesse, inconsiderate, unadvised, witlesse, uncircumspect, rash, retchlesse, or carelesse; and sottish, blockish, lumpish, lusk-like, without life, metall, spirit"
Sly and its variant Sleigh have degenerated in the same way as crafty and cunning, both of which once meant skilled. Chaucer calls the wings of Daedalus "his playes slye," i.e. his ingenious contrivances. Quick meant alert, lively, as in "the quick and the dead." Slight, cognate with Ger. schlecht, bad, once meant plain or simple.
Many adjectives which are quite obsolete in literary English survive as surnames. Mid. Eng. Lyle has been supplanted by its derivative Little, the opposite pair surviving as Mutch and Mickle. The poor parson did not fail—
"In siknesse nor in meschief to visite
The ferreste in his parisshe, muche and lyte."
(A, 493.)
We have for Lyte also the imitative Light; cf. Lightwood. With Little may be mentioned Murch, an obsolete word for dwarf—
"Murch, lytyl man, nanus."
(Prompt. Parv.)
Lenain is a fairly common name in France. Snell, swift or valiant, had become a personal name in Anglo-Saxon, but we find le snel in the Middle Ages. Freake, Frick, also meant valiant or warrior—
"Ther was no freke that ther wolde flye"