écrou

écrou¹ prison register, committal

Pronunciation

• /e.kʁu/^[1]

Forms

écrou m (plural écrous)^[1] Old French escroe and escroue, feminine; the masculine escrou is recorded in 1611.^[2][3]

Etymology

The word for the prison register is inherited from Old French escroe (“strip, scrap; strip of parchment”),^[2][3] borrowed from Frankish *skrōda (“scrap, piece cut off”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Frankish word is compared with Middle Dutch schrode (“piece cut off”),^[2][4] and Bloch and Wartburg connect German Schrot with it.^[4] The noun was feminine in Old French and became masculine from the 17th century.^[2][4][3]

Littré called the origin unknown, starting from the sense “scrap, shred” that he found in Old French.^[6] Wiktionary compares the English words escrow and scroll.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the sermons of Maurice de Sully (1168–1175) escroe is a strip of parchment or a written slip, a schedule.^[2][3] Bloch and Wartburg give an older sense still, a piece of cloth or leather.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From a slip of parchment the word came to mean a written list: an edict of Louis XII uses escroue in 1499 for the register of prisoners,^[2][3] and registre d'écrou is recorded from 1564.^[3] In 1611 Cotgrave also records escroue for the statement of the royal household's food expenses, a sense rare after the 18th century and now a historians' term.^[2][3]

Until the 17th century the word could also mean the release of a prisoner.^[7] In law it came in the 17th century to name the official record stating that a person has been handed over to a prison governor, with the date and grounds of the committal;^[3][7] it lives on mainly in ordre d'écrou “committal order” and levée d'écrou “release from prison”, the commonest of the phrases.^[3][8] The verb écrouer first meant “to tear to pieces” (13th century), then in law (1642) “to enter on the prison register” and, from 1823, “to imprison”.^[3]

Timeline

• 1168–1175 – Escroe “strip of parchment” in Maurice de Sully's sermons.^[2]
• Late 12th century – The form escroue appears.^[2][3]
• 1499 – An edict of Louis XII uses it for the register of prisoners.^[2]
• 1564 – Registre d'écrou is recorded.^[3]
• 1611 – Cotgrave records the masculine escrou.^[2][7]
• 1642 – The verb écrouer “to enter on the prison register” appears.^[3]
• 1685 – Furetière spells it écrou.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (law) The official record stating that a person has been received into a prison, with the date and the grounds of the committal.^[8][2]
2. Registre d'écrou: the prison's register of detainees.^[8][7]
3. Ordre d'écrou: an order to imprison someone.^[8][3]
4. Levée d'écrou: the record of a prisoner's release, and the release itself.^[8][7]

Word family

• écrouer

écrou² nut

Etymology tree of écrou²

inherited borrowed derived

Latin scrōfa

French écrou

Italian scrofa

Romanian scroafă

Pronunciation

• /e.kʁu/^[1]

Forms

écrou m (plural écrous)^[1] Old French escroe, Middle French escroue, feminine; the masculine écrou is recorded in 1567, the feminine écroue still in 1752.^[2][3]

Etymology

The word for the nut of a bolt is inherited from Old French escroe,^[2][1] inherited from Latin scrōfa (“sow”),^{[2][3][4][9][10][11]} which must have taken the sense “nut” in Late Latin through a coarse comparison,^[2][4] a sexual metaphor on the sow's vulva like the one behind porcelaine.^[9][3] The same image is found in scrufina (“screw nut”), Occitan escrofa (“screw nut”) and Spanish puerca, which meant both “sow” and “nut”.^[1][4] The word is rare outside French.^[4]

Littré instead derived it from Germanic, comparing English screw and German Schraube, and rejected Diez's Latin scrobis (“small pit”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Escroe first appears at the end of the 13th century in the French translation of Frederick II's treatise on falconry, meaning the threaded nut that receives a screw.^[2][3] It is rare before the 16th century.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its single technical sense, a piece pierced with a threaded hole into which a screw or bolt fits.^[3][2] Deschamps in the late 14th century speaks of clock wheels turning par leurs escroes,^[6] and Paré in the 16th describes a screw turning dans une escroue.^[6] The feminine escroue (1542) and écroue (1752) lasted beside the masculine écrou, recorded from 1567.^[2][3] The compound contre-écrou “lock nut” is recorded in 1870.^[3]

Timeline

• Late 13th century – Escroe in the translation of Frederick II's treatise on falconry.^[2]
• 1409–1410 – An isolated form acrous.^[2][3]
• 1542 – Escroue in the Amadis.^[2]
• 1567 – The masculine écrou in Plantin's Dialogues françoys.^[2]
• 1752 – The feminine écroue is still recorded by Trévoux.^[2]
• 1870 – Contre-écrou is first recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A nut: a piece of metal, wood or other hard material pierced with a threaded hole that receives a screw or bolt: serrer l'écrou d'une roue.^[8][2]
2. (figurative) Something that tightens, holds or joins things together.^[2]

Word family

• contre-écrou