Swatte

Our first mark of the black-clad Canonjs dramatic arrival is the glistening hide of his horse, which "So swatte that it wonder was to see" (8.560), while that of his yeoman, similarly, "So swatte that unnethe myghte it gon" (563).

Cecilia rests impassively in the bath of flames that "made here net a drope for to sweete" (522); and the less visible but equally striking fact that the word swete -- including its variants swoot and swatte -- is rarely used elsewhere in the Canterbury corpus.