A gloss is a note made in the margins or between the lines of a book, in which the meaning of the text in its original language is explained in another language. As such, glosses can vary in thoroughness and complexity, from simple marginal notations of words one reader found difficult or obscure, to entire interlinear translations of the original text. A book is a collection of leaves of paper, parchment or other material, bound together along one edge within covers. ... In language, text is something that contains words to express something. ... Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language—the called the source text—and the production of a new, equivalent text in another language—called the target text, or the translation. ...

Glosses are of some importance in philology, especially if one language—usually, the language of the author of the gloss—has left few monuments of its own. The Reichenau glosses, for example, gloss the Latin Vulgate Bible in an early form of one of the Romance languages, and as such give insight into late Vulgar Latin at a time when that language was not often written down. A series of glosses in the Old English language to Latin Bibles give us a running translation of Biblical texts in that language; see Old English Bible translations. Glosses of Christian religious texts are also important for our knowledge of Old Irish. Glosses frequently shed valuable light on the vocabulary of otherwise little attested languages; they are less reliable for syntax, because many times the glosses follow the word order of the original text, and translate its idioms literally. Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ... Latin is the language that was originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century translation of the Bible into Latin made by St. ... The Bible (From Greek (τα) βιβλια, (ta) biblia, (the) books, plural of βιβλιον, biblion, book, originally a diminutive of βιβλος, biblos, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos, meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported this writing material), is a word applied to sacred scriptures. ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin Languages, are a subfamily of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish Europa latina, French Europe latine) as Vulgar Latin later evolved... Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A number of Old English Bible translations were prepared in mediaeval England, translations of parts of the Bible into the Old English language. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... In linguistics, syntax is the study of the rules, or patterned relations, that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ... An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not compositional — that is, whose meaning does not follow from the meaning of the individual words of which it is composed. ...

Glosses are extremely important in theology. They are a primary format in medieval Biblical theology, and were studied and memorized almost upon their own merit, without regards to the author. Many times a Biblical passage was heavily associated with a particular gloss, whose truth was taken for granted by many theologians.

A collection of glosses is a glossary. The compilation of glosses into glossaries was the beginning of lexicography, and the glossaries so compiled were in fact the first dictionaries. This is a list of glossaries (pages containing terms and their definitions or explanations). ... Lexicography is either of two things Practical lexicography is the art or craft of writing dictionaries. ... Manual of Specialised Lexicography, Henning Bergenholtz/Sven Tarp (eds. ...