charrue

Forms

charrue f (plural charrues)^[1] Old French chesrue, charrue;^[2][3] Picard and Anglo-Norman carue and karue.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin carrūca (“state carriage”), a derivative of carrus (“wagon”), a word of Gaulish origin.^[4][5][6][7] The Latin word first named a luxurious carriage for people of very high rank, then any two-wheeled vehicle (late 2nd to early 3rd century, in Ulpian).^[4][5] In Gaul it was narrowed to the wheeled plough brought in by the Franks, as against the wheelless Roman plough, arātrum, whose descendant is araire.^[4][5] A sense “area of land worked with one plough” confirms the plough meaning by about 800, but the plough itself is only certainly named in the 9th century, in the Polyptych of Irminon.^[4]

Bloch and Wartburg see the wheeled plough as a Germanic invention, needed for the heavier soils of the Germanic lands, and note that Virgil already called such a plough with a wheeled forecarriage currus.^[6]

Cognate with Old Occitan carruga (“cart”), Portuguese charrua and Italian carruca, and with the northern dialect forms Picard kérue, Norman quiérue and Walloon chèrowe.^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLFi's first record is in the Roman d'Alexandre (1180–1200), and the Grand Robert dates the word to about 1190.^[4][8] Littré quotes the Roncevaux form chesrue in a line saying that the oxen of a plough could not have moved it, and the GLLF also takes its first example, for the plough, from Roncevaux.^[2][9]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the sense “plough” throughout.^[5] In Old French it could also name the area of land one plough could work, as in Beaumanoir's carues de rentes.^[2][4]

It gave several figurative phrases, nearly all now dated, such as tirer la charrue “to toil”.^[5][2] The one still in use is mettre la charrue avant les bœufs “to do things in the wrong order”, first devant les bœufs (1675), which remakes an older variant of the 15th and 16th centuries.^[5][2] The verb charruer (1339) lost out to labourer.^[5]

In Quebec French charrue is used informally for a snowplough.^[5][1]

Timeline

• 1180–1200 – First record, in the Roman d'Alexandre.^[4]
• 13th century – Beaumanoir uses carues for ploughlands.^[2]
• 1339 – The derived verb charruer is recorded.^[5]
• 15th century – Tournant la charrue contre les bœufs, an early form of the phrase about putting things in the wrong order.^[2][5]
• 1675 – Mettre la charrue devant les bœufs.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A plough, a farm implement drawn by animals or a tractor, whose main part is a cutting ploughshare.^[10][4]
2. (Quebec, familiar) A snowplough.^[5][1]

Related words

• char
• araire
• Latin carrūca

Usage notes

Mettre la charrue avant les bœufs means to do first what should come second.^[5][9][1] The older araire named the wheelless plough of the Romans.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
3. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 424b
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
10. ^ Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert