beard

Forms

beard m (strong a-stem; genitive singular beardes, nominative plural beardas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *bard, from Proto-Germanic *bardaz (“beard”).^[1][2] Its West Germanic relatives are Old Frisian berd, Old Saxon bard and Old High German bart, and Old Norse barð, which means “rim, edge, prow”.^[2][3][4]

Outside Germanic the word matches Latin barba, Lithuanian barzdà and Proto-Slavic *borda, all “beard”;^[4][5] Orel takes the ⟨zd⟩ of the Lithuanian form to be secondary.^[4][5] Köbler and Wiktionary set up the noun Proto-Indo-European *bʰardʰeh₂ (“beard”).^[3][1] The inherited noun was feminine, as in Latin and Lithuanian;^[2][1] Germanic made it a masculine a-stem.^[2][1]

In Old English the vowel ⟨a⟩ was first fronted to ⟨æ⟩ and then broken before /r/ and a consonant, giving ⟨ea⟩.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is the Old English gloss of the Vespasian Psalter, added in the mid-ninth century: Psalm 132 has Swe swe smiring in heafde ðæt astag in beard beard aarones “like ointment on the head that ran down onto the beard, the beard of Aaron”, over the Latin “in barbam”.^[6][7]

Semantic evolution

The word names a man's beard throughout the record, and it renders Latin “barba” in the glosses.^[8][3] The plural beardas could stand for the beard and whiskers of a single man, as in Ælfric's he hæfð side beardas “he has long beards”.^[9][10] Bosworth and Toller note that the beard mattered socially: the laws of Alfred fine a man who shaves off another's beard twenty shillings, and sixty if he binds him and shaves him like a priest.^[8][11] Church rules, on the other hand, forbade a man in orders to wear a beard.^[9]

The word lived on as Middle English berd, now English beard.^[12][13]

Timeline

• s. ix med. – in beard beard aarones in the Vespasian Psalter gloss.^[6][7]
• s. x¹ – the same verse glossed on beard in the Junius Psalter.^[14][7]
• s. x ex. – beards in Ælfric's Catholic Homilies I.^[15][7][9]
• s. x/xi – beard in the Old English Martyrology.^[16][17]
• c. 1275 – Middle English bærd in Laȝamon's Brut.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. a beard, the hair on a man's chin and cheeks.^[8][18][3]
2. (plural with singular meaning) beard and whiskers.^[9][10]

Word family

• wangbeard

Descendants

• Middle English berd (→ English beard; Middle Scots beird; Middle Scots berd)^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 180
3. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. beard
4. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 36
5. ^ a b Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 17
6. ^ a b Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 329
7. ^ a b c d Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
8. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 72
9. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 65
10. ^ a b Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 40
11. ^ Liebermann, F. (1906), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. II.1: Wörterbuch, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 20
12. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
13. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 515
15. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 407
16. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 281
17. ^ Rauer, Christine, ed. (2013), The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer (glossary), p. 108
18. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 35