Middle English

noun

the English language as written and spoken between c. 1100 and c. 1500, preceded by Old English and followed by Early Modern English: it is characterized by the loss of grammatical gender and most of the inflectional endings of Old English, by the emergence of a syntax based on word order and function words, by the simplification of the pronominal system, and by extensive vocabulary borrowings from French, Latin, and Low German sources