† rubeen.

Etymology: Either < Anglo-Norman rubee madder (apparently 13th cent.: see note below) or its etymon post-classical Latin rubea, variant of classical Latin rubia (see rubiaceous adj.), or < post-classical Latin rubeae, genitive singular of rubea. Compare Middle French rubie (1570; French rubia), Old Occitan roia (13th cent.; also roja, roga), Spanish rubia (1498), Italian robbia (a1347).The apparently earliest attestation of Anglo-Norman rubee (a form unparalleled in continental French) occurs in a translation of Johannes Platearius's Practica brevis. As this translation contains many examples of mixed-language noun phrases in which a French noun is followed by a Latin genitive singular, e.g. del fruit juniperii ‘juniper fruit’, la ferine fenugreci ‘powdered fenugreek’, it is uncertain whether the instance that appears to show the Anglo-Norman noun, la racine rubee la menor ‘root of the lesser madder’, can be taken as showing a French noun (so Anglo-Norman Dict. at cited word) rather than a Latin genitive singular rubeae. The same uncertainty applies to the following glossarial quot., which could either show another instance of the Anglo-Norman noun or the genitive singular of the Latin noun:a1325 Glosses in Erfurt MS in Anglia (1918) 42 158 Rubee, i. mader. Although most lemmas in the glossary in question are French, other combinations of lemmas and glosses (e.g. Latin–English, Latin–French, English–Latin) also occur, and the Latin lemmas are sometimes given in the genitive singular.