I stumbled across this site on Anglo-Norman. Some of it proved quite fascinating. Unfortunately the dictionary part is still under development and has restricted access. Still...do have a browse.

http://and4.anglo-norman.net:8082/

Dear dxb: thanks for that URL.

Wouldn't that be a cool thing to be? :-)

The notion that the intelligibility of a language might sometimes be impaired by the presence of two or more terms having the same or very similar spelling and/or pronunciation was expounded by the linguistic geographers around the beginning of the twentieth century - the concept of the 'homonymic clash'. The linguistic geographers were working on modern dialectal material, but their idea of the homonymic clash has been applied on occasion to historical linguistics also.

Wouldn't that be a cool thing to be? :-)

What, a homonymic clash?

edit: oops, no *rimshot* for me, Jackie. I didn't read your subject line.

Whew! So I'm not the only one whose brain fails to absorb subject lines. I only go back to them when the post seems like a non-sequitur. Or rather, seems more so than usual.

Heh heh heh, my little plot worked, she said rubbing her hands together gleefully...

to crossthread, you mean "she sang gleefully"

she sang gleefully
Ahem--I am not a cricket, madam. ;-)