So how did the Anglo-Saxons talk about bread? In another list we find a word from the Bible, manna, translated by the phrase heofenlic hlaf – ‘heavenly bread’. We would know hlaf today as loaf. The h stopped being pronounced at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, and the long ‘ah’ vowel gradually changed into an ‘oh’ vowel during the Middle Ages. While that was happening, hlaf came to be more restricted in meaning, eventually being used for just the undivided, shaped amount of bread that we now call a loaf.
There are very few instances of the word bread in Old English, but hlaf appears frequently – and in some interesting combinations. The head of a household was seen as the person who provides bread for all, a hlaf-weard, literally a ‘bread-warden’. A servant or dependant was someone who ate his bread: a hlaf-æta, ‘bread-eater’. A steward was a hlafbrytta, a ‘bread-distributor’. A lady was originally a hlæfdige, ‘bread-kneader’. That -dige ending is related to the modern word dough.
Hlaf turned up quite a lot in Christian religious settings too. Lammas was 1st August, the day when the eucharistic bread was first baked from the new harvest. That name comes from hlaf-maesse, ‘loaf-mass’. Walking to the altar to receive the host was a hlaf-gang, a ‘bread-going’. Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ was born, was a hlaf-hus, a ‘house of bread’.
Hlaf-weard changed its form in the 14th century. People stopped pronouncing the f, and the two parts of the word blended into one, so that the word would have sounded something like ‘lahrd’. Eventually this developed into laird (in Scotland) and lord. It’s rather nice to think that the ‘high status’ meanings of lord in modern English – master, prince, sovereign, judge – all have their origins in humble bread. And it’s the unexpectedness of this etymology that qualifies loaf to take its place in this book.
Loaf then went on new linguistic journeys. Different kinds of loaves appeared, such as white loaf and brown loaf. Several derived forms were coined, such as loaflets and mini-loafs (small loaves), loaf-shaped and loaf-tin. The shape generated a range of non-bread uses, such as meat loaf and sugar-loaf. There were technical senses too, such as the religious use of holy loaf (for bread distributed at Mass).
But nobody could have predicted the 20th-century use of loaf in Cockney rhyming slang. In fact, two rhymes evolved, but only one survived. The popular usage had loaf of bread replacing head. It soon reduced to simply loaf, especially in the phrase Use your loaf, meaning ‘use your common sense’. The Oxford English Dictionary has references to this expression from 1938, and it seems to have been widely used in forces slang. It has a somewhat dated feel about it today.
The defunct usage had loaf of bread replacing dead. You can find it in Auden and Isherwood’s play The Dog beneath the Skin (III.iii.123):
Oh how I cried when Alice died
The day we were to have wed!
We never had our Roasted Duck
And now she’s a Loaf of Bread.
Out
changing grammar (9th century)
An easy way of making new vocabulary is to take a word and change it into another word by using it in a different way in a sentence. We take a verb and turn it into a noun. Or turn an adjective into a verb. Any part of speech can have its grammar shifted in this way. The process is technically described as conversion or functional shift.
English-speakers have been doing this with words since Anglo-Saxon times. Take a little word like out. It could be a verb: to out was to ‘expel’ or ‘dismiss’. Or an adverb, as in to draw out a sword. Or an exclamation: Out! meant ‘Alas!’, now heard only in some regional dialects. It could be a preposition, as in out the door – a usage disallowed in standard English today, though common regionally. An adjective use appears in the out edge, where today we’d say the outer edge. And from the 17th century it’s been used as a noun, as in the ins and outs (‘the complexities’) and looking for an out (‘a means of avoiding’), as well as in such games as baseball (two outs).
New uses continue to emerge. The adjective got a fresh lease of life in the 1960s, when people talked about the out crowd (‘unfashionable set’). A new verb use followed: to out oneself or someone else was to make public an undeclared sexual identity. From there it was a short step to any kind of exposure of private information. Since the 1990s, people can be outed as the originator of an idea, a member of an organisation or the parent of a child.
Out is one of thousands of words which have changed their grammar. Such verbs as laugh, look, push and lift have all become nouns. Adjectives have become verbs (to calm, to empty) and nouns (a nasty, a given). Nouns have become verbs (to host, to contact) and adjectives (garden chair, railway station).
Shakespeare was the conversion expert. ‘I eared her language.’ ‘He words me.’ Some of his conversions seem really daring. Even the name of a person can become a verb. ‘Petruchio is Kated.’ But all he was doing was tapping into a natural everyday usage that is still with us. How many parents haven’t said something like this?
Child (at bedtime): But I want to watch Mickey
Mouse.
Parent: I’ll Mickey Mouse you if you don’t get those
pyjamas on right now!
Even though changes like this are ancient and frequent, people do sometimes dislike conversions. The verb spend is known from the 12th century, and developed a new lease of life in the 20th, when businessmen started talking about advertising spends and the like. Letters began to appear in the press objecting to this ‘horrible new’ word.
In fact the usage wasn’t new at all. John Bunyan used spend as a noun in the 17th century. And the same pedigree is found in noun-to-verb shifts, which are also sometimes criticised. Author has been especially disliked: She’s authored a new book. The first recorded use of author as a verb is 1596, but for some reason it continues to attract criticism.
Today, nouns can become verbs in next to no time. Google was launched in September 1998 (see §77). People were googling by the end of the year.
Street
a Latin loan (9th century)
The Romans spoke Latin. So, later, did the missionaries that arrived in Britain. As a result, quite a few words of Latin origin came into English in its early years. Street, from Latin strata, was one of the first. We find it in the earliest Old English manuscripts, written as stræt – the æ letter representing a long vowel sound a bit like the a in modern English dare.
When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain, they found that the Romans had already built a network of long, straight, paved roads to supplement the many paths which dated from prehistoric times. They used the Germanic word weg (‘way’) to describe these ancient tracks, which had emerged over time through repeated usage, as in hrycgweg (‘ridgeway’). They used the Latin word to describe the Roman innovations – streets.
The names of the four major Roman highways reflect this difference. Watling Street (from London to near Shrewsbury) and Ermine Street (from London to the Humber) were Roman roads. Icknield Way (from Gloucestershire to south Yorkshire) was prehistoric. What we now call the Fosse Way – a Roman road running between Leicester and Axminster – seems to go against this distinction, until we realise that it was originally known as Fosse Street. The name Fosse Way dates only from the 15th century.
Over 500 words came into English from Latin during the earliest period of Old English. We can never be sure exactly when they arrived. Some would have been picked up by the Celtic-speaking Britons during the Roman occupation and become familiar to the first Germanic settlers. Some would have been brought over from the continent of Europe in the Anglo-Saxon boats. And the Latin-speaking monks would certainly have added to the number.
The new words expressed a wide range of notions. There were words for plants and animals, food and drink, household objects, coins, clothing, settlements and building materials, as well as to do with military, legal, medical and commercial matters. Candle and kettle, cup and kitchen, cat and dragon, are all originally Latin words. So are butter, cheese, sack, wall, mile and wine.
Words fr
om Latin continued to come into English throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, but they changed their character. The teaching of the Church had to be communicated to the people, so new vocabulary was needed to express the new concepts, personnel and organisational procedures. Words such as altar, creed, deacon, school and philosopher arrived. So did grammar.
Meanwhile, street was developing its own meanings and uses. We find several old idioms, such as by sty and by street or by street and stile. If something happened ‘by sty and by street’, it was happening ‘everywhere’. Another medieval idiom was to wend one’s street, meaning ‘to go one’s own way’. And if you took the street, it meant you were setting out on a journey. These all died out in the 1500s.
2. Terry Pratchett (left), and a character from his Discworld saga, at one of the streets in Wincanton, Somerset, named after a location in the series. Why Wincanton? It had twinned with the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork in 2002.
But new uses were arriving. In the 16th century the street came to be used for the money-market area of London. In the 18th century we find it referring to a locale for prostitution (on the street) as well as a description of the average person (the man on the street). In the 19th century, on the street developed the meaning of ‘homeless’. And the word continued to grow. Streetwise arrived in the 1940s. To be street – in tune with urban subculture – in the 1970s. It was followed by street credibility, soon shortened to street cred. In the 1990s street became a term for a type of skateboarding.
So what happened to the original meaning of street? For a long time it was used as part of a description of the highway, as in Broad Street and Mill Street. Even today British English keeps the definite article in front of some of these names: we say I was shopping in the High Street, not … in High Street. Eventually other criteria were used, such as the name of an important person (Wellington Street) or occupation (Brewer Street). American English went in for numerals and letters: M Street, 32nd Street. Today, virtually any word in the language can be used along with street. In 2009 a new road in Wincanton, Somerset, was named after a location in a Terry Pratchett Disc-world novel: Peach Pie Street.
Mead
a window into history (9th century)
Today we think of mead as a rather exotic alcoholic drink, made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water. In early history it was the alcoholic beverage of choice throughout ancient Europe, Asia and Africa. Some think it was the first fermented drink. It makes frequent appearances in the Germanic folk-tales of the first millennium and repeatedly appears in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, such as the epic poem Beowulf.
Mead was more than just a drink. It was a symbol of power. If you had the time and luxury to sit around drinking mead, then all must have been well in your land. And conversely: if you didn’t have that opportunity, things must have been going badly. At the very beginning of Beowulf we are told that the king, Scyld Scefing, ‘from bands of enemies, from many tribes, took away mead-benches’. That settles it. They would have been victories indeed!
So it’s not surprising to find that there was a large vocabulary of mead-words in Old English. Through this single word we obtain a considerable insight into Anglo-Saxon culture and society. A settlement might actually be called a medu-burh – a place renowned for its mead-drinkers. Any warrior living there would make nightly visits to the medu-heall (‘mead-hall’) or medu-seld (‘mead-house’) – the equivalent of the modern city hall – where his leader would be holding court and feasting. How would he get there? By walking along a medu-stig (‘path to the mead-hall’) through the medu-wang (‘land surrounding the mead-hall’). All roads, it seemed, led to mead.
Once inside the hall, the vocabulary of mead was all around him. The place to sit was called a medubenc (‘mead-bench’) or medu-setl (‘mead-seat’). He and his fellow-warriors would engage in a lengthy bout of medu-drinc (‘mead-drinking’), taking a meduscenc (‘draught of mead’) from a medu-full (‘mead-cup’). He would soon get medu-gal (‘enthused by the mead’) and experience medu-dream (‘mead-joy’). If he had too much, he would end up medu-werig (‘mead-weary’).
It’s fascinating to see a word being used in this way, permeating so many aspects of social behaviour. And it’s a feature of English which we continue to exploit today. Whisky drinkers might buy a whisky bottle from a whisky shop or (in olden days) a whisky house, and pour a whisky peg from a whisky decanter into a whisky glass. They might become whisky sodden or develop a whisky voice. On the other hand, we don’t extend the usage as much as the Anglo-Saxons did. We don’t usually talk about whisky seats, whisky paths or whisky joy.
In the Middle Ages, mead changed its social standing in Britain. Wine became the drink of choice among the upper class, leaving mead, along with ale and cider, as the drink of the poor. Mead never died out as a drink, but it took second place to ale and cider, which were much easier to brew. Ale is used fifteen times in Shakespeare; mead not once.
Gradually, mead came back into fashion, sometimes developing new uses and shifting its meaning. In the 17th century it could be used to mean any sweet drink. Robert Burton used the term mead-inn in 1632, referring particularly to Russian drinking practices – a tavern where mead was the main drink sold. People in Britain in the 18th century drank mead wine.
In the USA, the name took on a different sense, referring to various sweet carbonated drinks sometimes flavoured with sarsaparilla. Americans continue to be strongly interested in mead today. There’s an International Mead Association, and a festival is held every year in Colorado. New mead-words continue to be coined. The occasion is a meadfest, and many meaderies and mead-lovers attend. There are meadmaking courses, meadings (tasting parties) and if you want you can read a meadzine.
But beware: don’t mix up the ‘drink’ sense of the word mead with another sense which is recorded in English from a few centuries later – a shortened form of meadow. When you see such words as mead-flower, meadsweet and meadwort, these are all meadow flowers. They have nothing to do with the drink. And if you know a road called the Meadway, that’s the ‘meadow’ sense too, and a later development. It’s mead in the ‘drink’ sense that fascinates linguists, because it’s part of a window into the origins of English.
Merry
a dialect survivor (9th century)
The first time we see the word merry is in an Old English manuscript, made by or for King Alfred, at the end of the ninth century. Except we don’t actually see merry, spelled like that. What we see is myrige, which would have been pronounced something like ‘mi-ree-yuh’.
There were many words in Old English written with that letter y. It seems to have represented a vowel sound pronounced high up in the front of the mouth, a bit like the i of sit, but with rounded lips. We can hear the same sound today in the way many Scots people pronounce you, or the way the French say tu. By the Middle Ages, people must have stopped rounding their lips, because the scribes started writing the word with an i. Middle English manuscripts show such spellings as miri and mirye.
In Anglo-Saxon manuscripts we also see the word spelled as muri and meri. That suggests there were different dialect pronunciations in the country. And when we look at where the people who wrote the manuscripts were located, we can indeed begin to see a dialect pattern. The scribes who used the i spelling were based in the south, around Winchester. Those who used u came from further west. And those who used e came from the south-east, in Kent.
By the Middle Ages, there was a huge tangle of spellings. Over fifty ways of spelling merry have been recorded. Versions with e, u and i turn up all over the place. And then, gradually, the spelling with e won, reflecting the pronunciation which had become the norm in London and the south-east.
What could be merry, in Old English? The word originally meant ‘something that causes pleasure’, so it was used for all kinds of things and happenings. Songs, birds, harps, organs and voices could all be merry. So could the weather, the countryside, days, winds and smells. Books and stories were merry. So were cl
othes and jewellery. And the sun and stars. And countries. Merry England dates from around 1400.
Only in the 14th century did the word come to be applied to people, and then it developed a remarkable range of uses. Merry England indeed! We see it used for any kind of animated enjoyment – and also when the animation is drink-fuelled. Anyone happily tipsy is said to be merry. That usage goes back to the Middle Ages, when people were also said to be merry-drunk. In the 16th century, strong ale was called merry-go-down.
One sign of a word becoming really established is when it turns up in idioms, book titles, nicknames and compound words, and from the 14th century we see it in a whole host of phrases. Idioms? Make merry and the more the merrier. Titles? The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Merry Widow. Nicknames? The Merry Monarch (Charles II) and the Merry Men (of Robin Hood). Compounds? The supremely descriptive and merrythought. A merry-totter was a medieval name for a children’s swing or see-saw. It’s still heard today in some regional dialects, especially in Yorkshire. And in the 16th century, a merrythought was a word for a fowl’s wishbone, pulled and broken while each party made a wish.
The process continued in later centuries. In the 18th century we find the arrival of the fairground carousel – a merry-go-round. In the 19th century we find people being merry and bright and going on their merry way. Merry-go-up was a slang name for snuff. The Royal Navy came to be called the Merry Andrew. In the 20th century, we find merry maids used as the name of a wide range of enterprises, from milk chocolate caramels to domestic cleaning services. And in the USA and the Caribbean, merry became popular as a verb. One could merry oneself (‘amuse oneself’). And people could merry up, such as after a drink, or merry up a room if it looked dull.
The ultimate accolade was when merry came to be used, in the 16th century, as a greeting for one of the chief festivities of the year. Merry Christmas! And, for a while, Merry New Year too, until Happy took over. Not a bad career for what was originally a Kentish dialect word.
The Story of English in 100 Words Page 3