bréhaigne

Forms

bréhaigne (plural bréhaignes)^[1] Old French baraine (about 1119), brahaigne (about 1160) and brehaigne (early 13th century).^[2] The Académie and the TLFi also spell it brehaigne without the accent.^[3]

Etymology

The origin is obscure.^[2][4][5] The word is first recorded as baraine and only later, through an unexplained metathesis, with the shape ⟨brehaigne⟩.^[2] Similar words of related form and meaning in several Romance languages point to a pre-Roman stem ⟨bar-⟩ meaning “barren, infertile”;^[2] Rey takes the ending ⟨-aigne⟩ to be the Latin suffix -āneus, as in montagne, and the ⟨h⟩ a mere separator between vowels.^[2] Bloch and Wartburg likewise call it a pre-Roman word, with related words spread as far as Albanian, and reconstruct a purely hypothetical base ⟨barañ⟩.^[6]

Guiraud saw in it a pejorative prefix ⟨bar-⟩ and the ⟨-haigne⟩ of Old French meshaing (“mutilated”), from a dialect verb haigner (“to bite, tear”), the sense passing from “mutilate” to “castrate”;^[7][8][2] the DHLF finds this hard to square with the history of the senses.^[2] Wiktionary favours a derivative of Frankish *bar, from Proto-Germanic *bazaz (“bare”),^[1] but the DHLF considers a Germanic origin at odds with where the words are found, and rejects an origin in Latin vorāgō (“whirlpool, abyss”) on grounds of sound and sense.^[2] Diez had proposed Late Latin barus (“man”), as if the barren woman were a “man-woman”.^[9]

Littré lists dialect forms such as Picard braine and Walloon brouhagne.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found as baraigne in Philippe de Thaon in 1119; in the 12th century it was said first of barren land, as in the Old French Book of Kings: “Pesmes sont les eves et baraignes les terres” (the waters are bad and the lands barren).^[5][2][6][9]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old French the word was also applied to a barren woman, as in the Book of Kings, “la baraigne plusurs enfantad” (the barren woman bore many children), until in 1680 it was judged insulting and fell out of use in that sense.^[9][2] It remained in use for the females of some animals, such as a mare or a hind, and for a carp that has neither roe nor milt.^[2][5][4] In literature it is also used figuratively of what bears no fruit.^[5][3]

English took the Old French word as barren about 1200, first of female animals and plants.^[10]

Timeline

• 1119 – Baraigne appears in Philippe de Thaon.^[5][2]
• c. 1160 – The metathesized form brahaigne appears.^[2]
• c. 1200 – English borrows the word as barren.^[10]
• Early 13th century – The form brehaigne appears.^[2]
• 1680 – The word is judged insulting when said of a woman.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of the females of certain animals: sterile, barren: une chèvre bréhaigne.^[3][4][8]
2. Of a carp: having neither roe nor milt.^[4][5][9]
3. (dated or literary, of a woman) Barren, childless; also as a noun, une bréhaigne.^[3][5][9]
4. (figurative, literary) Producing nothing, unfruitful.^[3][5]

Related words

• stérile

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
4. ^ a b c d Académie française (1992–2024), Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 9th ed., Paris: Académie française / Fayard / Imprimerie nationale
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
6. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ a b Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c d e f Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
10. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com