(2 Henry IV., ii. 4.)
These are all very early loan words.
BROKER—WALNUT
A new drawing-room game for amateur philologists would be to trace relationships between words which have no apparent connection. In discussing, a few years ago, a lurid book on the "Mysteries of Modern London," Punch remarked that the existence of a villa seemed to be proof presumptive of that of a villain. This is etymologically true. An Old French vilain, "a villaine, slave, bondman, servile tenant" (Cotgrave), was a peasant attached to his lord's ville or domain, Lat. villa. For the degeneration in meaning we may compare Eng. boor and churl (p. [84]), and Fr. manant, a clodhopper, lit. a dweller (see manor, p. [9]). A butcher, Fr. boucher, must originally have dealt in goat's flesh, Fr. bouc, goat; cf. Ital. beccaio, butcher, and becco, goat. Hence butcher and buck are related. The extension of meaning of broker, an Anglo-Norman form of brocheur, shows the importance of the wine trade in the Middle Ages. A broker was at first[109] one who "broached" casks with a broche, which means in modern French both brooch and spit. The essential part of a brooch is the pin or spike.
When Kent says that Cornwall and Regan—
"Summon'd up their meiny, straight took horse."
(Lear, ii. 4.)
he is using a common Mid. English and Tudor word which comes, through Old Fr. maisniee, from Vulgar Lat. *mansionata, a houseful. A menial is a member of such a body. An Italian cognate is masnadiere, "a ruffler, a swashbuckler, a swaggerer, a high way theefe, a hackster" (Florio). Those inclined to moralise may see in these words a proof that the arrogance of the great man's flunkey was curbed in England earlier than in Italy. Old Fr. maisniee is now replaced by ménage, Vulgar Lat. *mansionaticum. A derivative of this word is ménagerie, first applied to the collection of household animals, but now to a "wild beast show."
A bonfire was formerly a bone-fire. We find bane-fire, "ignis ossium," in a Latin dictionary of 1483, and Cooper explains pyra by "bone-fire, wherein men's bodyes were burned." Apparently the word is due to the practice of burning the dead after a victory. Hexham has bone-fire, "een been-vier, dat is, als men victorie brandt." Walnut is related to Wales, Cornwall, the Walloons, Wallachia and Sir William Wallace. It means "foreign" nut. This very wide spread wal is supposed to represent the Celtic tribal name Volcæ. It was applied by the English to the Celts, and by the Germans to the French and Italians, especially the latter, whence the earlier Ger. welsche Nuss, for Walnuss. The German Swiss use it of the French Swiss, hence the canton Wallis or Valais. The Old French name for the walnut is noix gauge, Lat. Gallica. The relation of umbrella to umber is pretty obvious. The former is Italian—
"A little shadow, a little round thing that women bare in their hands to shadow them. Also a broad brimd hat to keepe off heate and rayne. Also a kinde of round thing like a round skreene that gentlemen use in Italie in time of sommer or when it is very hote, to keepe the sunne from them when they are riding by the way."