Word of the Day: Churlish
Dictionary.com does the etymology of this fabulous word for us:
Today’s word has taken an amazing journey through many different languages, where it acquired meanings ranging from “churl” to “king.” It originated as Proto-Germanic *karilaz. The Old Norse descendant of this word became karl “old man,” a word which spread throughout the Germanic languages as a man’s name. In Old High German, the ancestor of modern German, it became karal “man, husband” (today Kerl “guy, fellow”) whence it was borrowed into French as “Charles” and Medieval Latin as “Carolus.” Charlemagne [Charles le magne] “Charles the Great” had such an impact on Europe, that the Slavic nations borrowed his name as their general word for “king” (e.g. Serbian kralj, Russian korol’). In Old English, however, the word took a nose dive in the opposite direction: in ceorl the meaning dropped from “old man” to “peasant,” whose behavior the upper classes always considered “churlish.” Since the upper classes have historically determined how we speak, a churl is what he is today.
Churlish (a): like a churl; rude; boorish. And it has a fascinating sound.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 10:16 pm and is tagged with slavic nations, amazing journey, churl, germanic languages, medieval latin, korol, different languages, nose dive, carolus, magne, charlemagne, word of the day, etymology, churlish, descendant, peasant, ancestor, serbian, proto, dictionary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
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