Long road to the farm & ranch
Wouldn’t you think the words farm & ranch would have pretty simple etymologies? I did, & I was dead wrong.
Ranch showed up in English in 1808 meaning country house. By 1831 ranch also referred to a stock-farm & herding establishment. What I find interesting, though, is the long, twisted road from this word’s roots.
Ranch’s great grandmother-word was a Proto-Germanic word meaning something curved. Its next incarnation was in the Frankish language, where it meant row or line. From there it moved to French to mean install in position, and from there it became a Spanish verb meaning to lodge or station. From there, different forms of that Spanish verb were born, first meaning group of people who eat together, then mess hall, then small group of farm huts. It was this last one, rancho, that became the English word ranch in 1808.
Wild, eh?
The same goes for the word farm, which started out as a Proto-Indo-European verb meaning to hold firmly. From there it moved into Latin, meaning constant, firm, strong, stable. That form gave birth to a Latin verb meaning to fix, settle, confirm, or strengthen. And when Medieval Latin came along, a form meaning fixed payment was born.This moved into Old French to mean a rental or lease agreement, & when farm finally made it into English in the 1200s, it meant fixed payment or fixed rent. By the 1300s, farm meant a tract of leased land, & it wasn’t until the 1400s that farm came to mean cultivated land. What a long, strange trip our simple four-letter word farm has had.
Who knew?
Thanks for coming by, & feel free to leave a comment about these long, strange trips.
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My thanks go out to this week’s sources, Etymonline.com, Merriam-Webster.com, Wordnik, Collins Dictionary, & the OED.
Fascinating as usual. Do you think the word "firm", meaning "a corporation" comes from the same root as "farm"? Fixed payments might be involved.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the interesting difference between the use of the words "farm" and "ranch" in the US. There are no ranches east of the Mississippi. They are all farms. Even when cattle are involved. When I grew up in New England, I thought ranches were only for beef cattle and cowboys. The idea of a chicken ranch was hilarious. And a broccoli ranch? Totally LOL. Head 'em up, Move 'em out...Raw-broccoli!
Bingo! You are absolutely right, Anne. Firm & farm share a root. I'm guessing the 1808 arrival of ranch was just too late to impress easterners, who were already calling such things farms, whereas English speakers were still heading west at the time. Raw broccoli. Hmm. Not my favorite, but it might fly as a '60s TV show...
DeleteThat is amazing. Such a convoluted verbal trip for words that I would have thought would be as simple as any words could be.
ReplyDeleteHey Christine - That's exactly what I thought. It's a wacky language, but it's ours.
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