bridal

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English bridale (“wedding, wedding feast”),^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English brȳdealu (“wedding feast”), a compound from Old English brȳd (“bride”) + ealu (“ale”),^[3][5][6][7] that is, the drinking of ale at a wedding.^[5][4][6] The English words are bride and ale.^[7][8] As the second syllable lost its stress, it was taken for the suffix -al, first as in nouns like espousal and later as in adjectives like nuptial,^[4][8][9][7] and this association has been strong since the late 16th century.^[10][5] The adjective comes from the noun, though it was also understood as a derivative of bride with -al.^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A wedding feast: in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for the year 1075 or 1076,^[7][11][4] on the wedding of the Earl of Norfolk to the daughter of the Earl of Hereford, at which the guests plotted a rebellion against William the Conqueror: "There was that bride-ale, the source of man's bale".^[11]

Semantic evolution

Ale once also meant a festival at which ale was drunk, and the bride-ale is the earliest such ale recorded in English.^[11] Middle English shortened it to bridale and bridal, recorded from about 1200 in the Ormulum,^[4][11] and Chaucer used bridale once.^[12] By the 14th century it meant the whole wedding, not only the feast.^[11][7] In the 16th century the spelling -al or -all marked the loss of the long a and of the sense "ale",^[4] and by the 17th century the word was much used before nouns such as chamber, bed and cake.^[11] Because its ending looked like that of adjectives such as natal and mortal, it came to be felt as an adjective, certainly by the 18th century;^[11][4] Barnhart finds the attributive bridall in Spenser (1596) and the adjective in 1748,^[4] while the OED dates the adjective to before 1425.^[7] Johnson (1755) entered only the adjective, "belonging to a wedding; nuptial".^[13] The noun is now archaic or literary,^[14][5] though still used in Scotland for a wedding.^[15] Etymonline quotes Fitzedward Hall (1873) on the irony that the word now suggests champagne rather than ale.^[16]

Timeline

• 1075–76 – brȳdealu, a wedding feast, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.^[7][4]
• c. 1200 – bridale, in the Ormulum.^[4]
• before 1225 – figurative, a union likened to a marriage (obsolete by 1927).^[7]
• 14th century – the whole wedding, not only the feast.^[11]
• before 1425 – adjective, of a wedding.^[7]
• 1596 – attributive bridall, in Spenser's Faerie Queene.^[4]
• 1747 – adjective, like a bride.^[7]
• 1857 – bridal suite.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to a bride or a wedding; nuptial: a bridal gown.^[3][7][13]
2. Meant for a newly married couple: the bridal suite.^[3][14]
3. Like a bride.^[7]

Noun

1. (archaic) A wedding, or the festivities of a wedding.^[3][14][5]

Word family

• bridally
• prebridal

Related words

• bride
• ale
• bridegroom
• bridle
• -al

Usage notes

Dictionary.com lists bridal among the words confused with bridle.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
13. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
16. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com