boucher

boucher¹ to stop up

Pronunciation

• /bu.ʃe/^[1]

Forms

boucher^[1] Old and Middle French spellings include bouchier, boscher and bouscher.^[2]

Etymology

The word for stopping up is from Old French bousche (“handful of straw, bundle”), formed with the verb ending of the infinitive, so that it first meant to stop an opening with a wisp of straw.^[3][4][5][6] This noun is itself recorded only in 1461, as a bundle of hemp, but its derivative bouchon is found in the first half of the 14th century, and Rey notes that the noun must be older than the verb if this explanation is right.^[3][5] It comes from Vulgar Latin *bosca (“brushwood, bundle of branches”), a neuter plural beside the masculine plural that gave bois.^[3][4][5]

Littré rejected the older explanations from a Greek verb (Ménage) or a word for a mouthful (Diez), and supposed a lost noun meaning a stopper or a sheaf.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded about 1275 in the past participle bouchiés,^[4] and in Joinville, whose text has la boucha l'en bien “it was stopped up well”, of a closed door.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

The first sense, “to block with a handful of straw”, widened at once to closing an opening by putting something into it, and then to making a way impassable by blocking it.^[3] The 16th-century construction boucher quelqu'un “to blindfold someone” survives in boucher la vue “to block the view” (1694).^[3] Se boucher les yeux and se boucher les oreilles (about 1610) came to mean refusing to see or hear the truth.^[3][6]

The familiar en boucher un coin (late 19th century) first meant to leave someone speechless with surprise, then simply to astonish.^[3][7] The past participle bouché took the sense “dull-witted” (1690, esprit bouché).^[3]

Timeline

• 1272 – Recorded in Joinville, as the Grand Larousse and the Petit Robert date it.^[7][6]
• c. 1275 – The past participle bouchiés appears.^[4]
• Late 13th century – The derivative déboucher “to clear what is blocked” appears.^[3]
• 1412 – reboucher “to stop up again” is recorded.^[3]
• c. 1610 – Se boucher les yeux and se boucher les oreilles appear.^[3]
• 1688 – The compound bouche-trou is first recorded.^[3][5]
• 1690 – Esprit bouché “dull mind” appears.^[3]
• 1694 – Boucher la vue is recorded.^[3]
• Late 19th century – En boucher un coin appears.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To close an opening by filling it or putting something into it: boucher une fissure avec du mastic “to fill a crack with putty”.^[6][8]
2. To cork a bottle or container.^[6][9]
3. To block or obstruct a passage or way: un camion bouchait la ruelle “a lorry was blocking the alley”.^[6][2]
4. Boucher la vue: to block the view.^[6][2]
5. (reflexive) Se boucher le nez: to hold one's nose;^[6][9] se boucher les yeux, se boucher les oreilles (figurative): to refuse to see or to hear.^[6][9]
6. (familiar) En boucher un coin à quelqu'un: to astonish someone.^[7][3]

Word family

• bouchage
• bouche-trou
• bouchoir
• déboucher
• reboucher

boucher² butcher

Pronunciation

• /bu.ʃe/^[1]

Forms

boucher m (plural bouchers, feminine bouchère)^[1] Old French bochier, then bouchier (late 12th century, feminine bouchiere) and boucier (about 1270); the suffix -ier was later reduced to -er after the palatal ch.^[3][4] Anglo-Norman spellings include bocher, bouchier and bucher.^[10]

Etymology

The word for the butcher is inherited from Old French bochier, from Old French boc (“he-goat”) + -ier, so that it first named the man who killed the he-goats and sold their meat.^{[3][5][2][4][11]} Bloch and Wartburg suggest that he was at first the serf who slaughtered the young he-goats on the large estates, where one grown he-goat was enough for a whole flock.^[5] Rey finds the derivation confirmed by Late Latin *buccarius of the same sense and by Italian beccaio, from becco (“he-goat”);^[3][2] P. Guiraud rejected it and connected the word with bouquer and bouter, verbs of striking.^[4][3] The Petit Robert gives the derivation as possible only.^[6]

On the origin of bouc, Bloch and Wartburg and the FEW take it from Gaulish *bucco-, while Meyer-Lübke derives it from Frankish *bukk.^[5][11][12] The new word almost completely replaced the descendants of Latin macellārius, such as Old French maiselier, which was common until the 15th century.^[5]

Compare Old Occitan bochier.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found as bochier in the Roman de Renart, late in the 12th century, of the man who slaughters animals for meat;^[4][3] the Anglo-Norman Dictionary has a record from 1184.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Because the same man killed the animals and sold the meat until the 19th century, the word also named the meat seller (about 1220).^[3][4] In Old French it already meant an executioner (about 1270), and since the classical period a clumsy surgeon (1668, La Fontaine); both senses have nearly gone out of use.^[3] The sense “cruel, bloodthirsty man” (1616) is still used.^[3][6]

The English word butcher was taken about 1300 from the Anglo-Norman form.^[13]

Timeline

• 1180–1190 – Bochier appears, in the Roman de Renart.^[3][4]
• 1184 – An Anglo-Norman record.^[10]
• c. 1220 – Used of a seller of meat.^[3][4]
• c. 1220 – The derivative boucherie appears.^[3]
• c. 1270 – Used for an executioner.^[3]
• c. 1300 – English butcher is borrowed from Anglo-French.^[13]
• 1616 – Used of a cruel and bloodthirsty man.^[3][6]
• 1668 – La Fontaine uses it for a clumsy surgeon.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A butcher: a person who sells raw meat, or who works in a butcher's shop; feminine bouchère.^[6][8]
2. (technical) A person who slaughters cattle and sheep and sells their meat.^[6]
3. (figurative) A cruel, bloodthirsty man; also a clumsy surgeon or an officer careless of his men's lives.^[6][3]

Word family

• boucherie
• bouchère