crosse

Forms

crosse f (plural crosses)^[1] Old French croce and croche; the spelling crosse dates from the 14th century.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French croce, borrowed from Frankish *krukkju (“staff, crutch”), from Proto-Germanic *krukjō.^[1] The TLFi and the DHLF reconstruct a Germanic *krukja (“staff with a curved end”) from Old High German krucka (modern German Krücke), Old Saxon krukka and Middle Dutch crucke;^[4][5] Bloch and Wartburg call it West Germanic, meaning “crutch”.^[6] The word was crossed with croc “hook”.^[6][7][8] The /ɔ/ stays open and short because ⟨ss⟩ continues an older ⟨c⟩.^[4] Littré derived it from Latin crux (“cross”) through Late Latin forms, noting that the German word fits the sense but not the sound;^[3] the modern dictionaries reject this.^[4][5]

Cognate with Italian gruccia, Old Occitan crossa and Spanish croza;^[9][4] Bloch and Wartburg think the Spanish and Old Occitan words may be borrowed from French.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears as croce in the Chanson de Roland (about 1080), for the bishop's crosier: En l'arcevesque est bien la croce salve, “in the archbishop the crosier is well kept”.^[3][5][2]

Semantic evolution

The crosier, the staff with a curled head carried by bishops and abbots, was the first sense.^[5] By analogy the word named a crutch set under the armpit (about 1160), until béquille replaced it; it is still common in the dialects of France in that sense.^[5][6]

From Middle French (1381) it was a games word, the stick used to drive a stone or ball, and then the game itself.^[5][4] By metonymy it came to mean the curved end of a manufactured object (1616–1620), above all the butt of a firearm, a name kept after the butt became straight.^[5] Anatomy (crosse de l'aorte, before 1752) and botany (crosse de fougère) use it for a curled part of the body or plant.^[5][4]

The adjective crossé (13th century) belongs to the religious sense, as in abbé crossé et mitré.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1080 – Croce “crosier” appears in the Chanson de Roland.^[5][2]
• c. 1160 – It is used for a crutch.^[4][5]
• 14th century – The spelling crosse appears.^[2]
• 1381 – First record as a games term.^[4][5]
• 1616–1620 – Agrippa d'Aubigné uses it for the curved end of a musket's stock.^[4][5]
• before 1752 – Crosse de l'aorte is recorded.^[4][5]
• 1881 – Chercher des crosses à quelqu'un “to pick a quarrel” is recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A crosier, the pastoral staff of a bishop or abbot, curled at the top.^[8][10]
2. A curved stick used to drive a ball or puck in some games: crosse de hockey.^[8][10]
3. The curved end of an object: crosse de violon, crosse de fougère.^[8][10]
4. (anatomy) A curved part of an organ: crosse de l'aorte.^[8][4]
5. The butt of a rifle, pistol or other hand-held firearm.^[8][10]
6. (sports) Lacrosse.^[1]
7. (Quebec, informal) A swindle, usually de la crosse.^[1]
8. (dated, dialect) A crutch.^[2][6]

Word family

• crossé
• crosser
• crossette

Related words

• croc
• béquille

Usage notes

The familiar plural in chercher des crosses à quelqu'un “to pick a quarrel with someone” (1881) is probably a different word, from a verb crosser “to complain” (1790), which goes back to Latin glocire “to cluck”; it is now felt as the same word as crosse.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
3. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 o p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c d e 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 c d e f Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c d Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)