Old English WotW 002 hlāford and hlǣfdīġe - lord and lady (Patreon)

Word of the Week series index

Old English WotW 002

hlāford and hlǣfdīġe - lord and lady

Wes þū hāl! Hū gæþ hit mid þē? How’s it going with you? For today’s word of the week, we have a fascinating term from Old English: hlāford, which gives us our word for “lord.” The word has two roots: hlāf “bread” makes up the first part, which comes to us as “loaf.” The older form of hlāford is hlāfweard, and weard means “guardian,” hence “ward,” “to ward off” meaning to protect,” a “warden,” related to “beware,” “aware,” “watch,” etc. “Guardian” comes from French, from the same Germanic root that gave us the Old English term weard.

So the lord in early Mediaeval English society was the “bread-guardian,” which makes me think of where they stored the food should raiding bandits have ransacked the countryside. The wife of a hlāford was his hlǣfdīġe, and dīġe means “kneader,” one who kneads bread, cognate with “dough,” dāg in Old English. Thus hlǣfdīġe comes down to us as “lady.”

One who served the hlǣfdīġe and hlāford was a hlāfǣta, a “bread-eater.”

A remarkable look into aspects of early Mediaeval society, baked in to the roots of our vocabulary. Iċ þancie þē, wes þū hāl!