falconer

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English fauconer, also faukener, faconer and falconer,^[2] borrowed from Old French fauconer, the Anglo-Norman form,^[3][4][5] beside Old French fauconier, modern French fauconnier.^[6][7][8][9] The French word is formed from faucon, the source of falcon, and the agent suffix -ier.^[5][6][3] Dictionary.com also gives a Middle English falkenar from Medieval Latin falcōnārius.^[10] The bird's name comes through Old French from Late Latin falcō (“falcon”), which the OED says is commonly believed to be from falx (“sickle”), from the hooked talons;^[6][7][11] the spelling of the bird's name was refashioned after Latin in the 15th century.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

One who hunts with falcons: about 1386, in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, where the fauconers on a river have killed a heron with their hawks.^[6][2] The Middle English Dictionary dates the passage to about 1395.^[2] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the 12th century, partly as a surname,^[4] and Etymonline also has it as an English surname from the late 12th century.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From the early 15th century the word also meant a keeper and trainer of hawks,^[7][2][6] and it became an official title, Grand Falconer or formerly Great Falconer.^[6] Johnson (1755) defined it as one who breeds and trains hawks, or follows the sport of fowling with hawks, quoting Romeo and Juliet: "O for a falc'ner's voice".^[12] In the cant of the early 17th century a falconer was a confidence trickster who posed as a poor scholar and got his victims to pay for the printing of a worthless pamphlet, the "lure".^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1386 – one who hunts with falcons, in Chaucer.^[6][2]
• 1424 – a keeper or trainer of hawks.^[2] The OED's first quotation for this sense is from about 1440, in the Promptorium Parvulorum.^[6]
• 1608 – underworld slang, a confidence trickster.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who breeds, keeps or trains falcons or other hawks.^[14][5][3]
2. A person who hunts with falcons; one who follows the sport of falconry.^[14][5][6]

Word family

• underfalconer

Related words

• falconry
• falcon
• falcate

Usage notes

The OED has a separate, obsolete falconer, a game-bag carried by falconers, borrowed from French fauconnière and recorded from 1577 to 1592.^[6] In Norfolk the rough-legged buzzard was called a falconer.^[15]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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)
3. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
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)