husbonda

Forms

hūsbonda m^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Norse húsbóndi (“master of the house”), or an English formation from Old English hūs + bōnda made on the model of the Norse compound;^[2][1] Durkin leaves both possibilities open, and Wiktionary calls it a loan translation.^[2][1] Its second part, bōnda (“householder”), is itself a Norse loan, from Old Norse bóndi.^[2][3] The Norse word is properly a contracted participle, from an older húsbóandi (“one who dwells in a house”).^[4] Köbler takes it as a compound of the words for house and householder.^[5] Durkin counts it among the words of Norse origin that came in through the legal and social vocabulary of the Danelaw, beside lagu (“law”) and the simplex.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Bosworth and Toller quote it from the Chronicle's annal for 1048: one of Eustace's men tried to lodge in a man's house against his will and wounded ðone hūsbundon “the master of the house”, who killed him in turn.^[6][7] Toller's Supplement adds a passage of the West Saxon Gospels after Matthew 20:28, matching Luke 14:8, where se hūsbonda is the host who tells a guest to give up his seat.^[8] The DOE Corpus has only these two occurrences.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the word meant only “master of a house, householder”.^[6][5] Liebermann glosses it as “farmer, holder of a homestead”, noting that the Latin version of Ine's laws wrongly makes it synonymous with twelfhynde and hūslgenga.^[9][8] It continued as Middle English housbond, which from the late thirteenth century replaced the native wer in the sense “married man”; it is now English husband.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. the master of a house, householder.^[6][5][11]
2. (law) a farmer, the holder of a homestead.^[9]

Descendants

• Middle English husbonde (→ English husband; Scots husband)^[1]

Related words

• bōnda
• hūs

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Durkin, Philip (2014), Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 181
3. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 30
4. ^ Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 294
5. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. hūsbōnda
6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 568
7. ^ a b 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 Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 574
9. ^ a b Liebermann, F. (1906), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. II.1: Wörterbuch, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 119
10. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 117