Manuscripts vs. "manuscripts"

I had lunch with Dr. Taylor over at Poliblog yesterday. At one point in the conversation, he said to me, "I guess you are working on a manuscript." I was caught off guard and muttered something negative. He then commented that the nice thing about blogs is that you always know what your colleagues are working on. That left me wondering what I had written that caused him to think I was working on a manuscript.

Then, at about 3AM today, it hit me ... he meant "manuscript" in the non-medieval sense -- a paper or an article. Of course, the answer is "yes," I'm working on two articles and editing three books at the moment (to a lesser or greater capacity on each of the above).

My ear, though, heard the medievalist version of "manuscript," by which I thought he meant I was editing a medieval codex. At the moment, I'm not working with any manuscripts at the moment, though I do have articles under submission about BL Royal 12.D.xvii and BL Harley 585. So, in that sense, the answer is "no."

Someone out there needs to write a Medievalist/Normal Person phrasebook, so we can communicate with the outside world.