basken

The traditional derivation from baðask agrees better with the verb's Middle English semantics than alternative derivations from other Old Norse etymons such as bakask (“to bake oneself”) or baska (“to heat, warm”). However, Whitehall entirely denies the derivation of basken from Scandinavian since it is a "comparatively rare Literary English word which owes its currency in the language to Lydgate’s borrowing from Gower" which is unattested in either literature from areas of intensive Scandinavian influence or any modern dialect. Furthermore, he believes Gower understood basken to mean "dash about", claiming its conventional interpretation as "bathe" is a misinterpretation of Lydgate's reproduced by modern scholars.^[1] However, the MED provides examples of basken meaning "bathe" in pharmaceutical and craft contexts,^[2] some of which predate Gower, vitiating Whitehall's claims and raising the possibility that basken was specialised technical terminology that would be both naturally absent from literature until Gower consciously employed it and unknown to the archetypical traditional dialect speaker employed in agriculture.