companion

Etymology

From Middle English compaignon,^[1] borrowed from Old French compaignon,^[1][2] from Late Latin compāniō (“messmate”) (accusative compāniōnem),^[2][3] ultimately from Latin com- (“with, together”) + pānis (“bread”),^[1][4] literally “bread-fellow”.^[4] Recorded in English from c. 1300.^[4]

The Late Latin word is first found in the Frankish Lex Salica and is probably a translation of a Germanic word;^[4][5] compare Gothic gahlaiba (“messmate”).^[2][3] The English word displaced Old English ġefēra (“fellow traveller”).^[5][4]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
2. [1] [2] [3] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. [1] [2] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. [1] [2] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org