<<Todos los duelos con pan son buenos>>
"Bread alleviates all sorrows"
Miguel de Cervantes
My lords and ladies, my brave companions, today we're going to let our stomachs do the talking and speak of one of the great fuels of human civilisation: of bread. Of bread and the words with bread baked in...like the words above.
Anyone who has broken bread by the roadside with weary travellers they've trudged a long march alongside will have a feeling for the roots of the word "companion". It comes originally from the Latin for "one who breaks bread with you" from com "with, together" & panis "bread" and came into English around about 1300 from Old French.
Anyone who has broken bread by the roadside with weary travellers they've trudged a long march alongside will have a feeling for the roots of the word "companion". It comes originally from the Latin for "one who breaks bread with you" from com "with, together" & panis "bread" and came into English around about 1300 from Old French.
Incidentally, the "pa-" of "panis" comes ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to feed, tend, protect, guard", which is the same root from which we get the words "feed", "food", "fodder", "pasture", and "pastor".
Which, the lord being my shepherd (and distributor of daily bread), brings us neatly on to the words "lord" and "lady". There is a loaf of bread inside of them that speaks of the responsibility of the heads of a household to provide nourishment for their dependants.
Lord is a shortening of hlaf weard, from the Old English hlaf "bread, loaf" & weard "keeper, guardian" (think about warden). Lady is a shortening of hlaf dige; from Old English hlaf "bread, loaf" & dige "maid, kneader of bread". The "dige" part of lady comes from the same root as "dough".
And "dough", like "bread", is often used as a synonym for money. But that is a wordtale for another day.
