rochet

rochet¹ surplice

Pronunciation

• /ʁɔ.ʃɛ/^[1]

Forms

rochet m (plural rochets)^[1] Older spellings rocket (13th century) and roquet (14th–16th centuries).^[2]

Etymology

The word for the surplice is formed from French *roc (“garment”) + -et, the diminutive of an unrecorded noun that rendered Medieval Latin roccus (“tunic, monk's frock”) (from about 799).^[3][4] That noun is from Frankish *rokk (“tunic”), a variant of *hrokk, the source of froc.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} The TLFi passes through Old High German rock (“tunic, coat”), a variant of hrock.^[8] Bloch and Wartburg point to the Latin word in the Capitularies of Charlemagne and to German Rock (“coat”).^[6]

Littré compares Spanish roquete and Italian rocchetto.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found about 1170, in Guillaume de Saint-Pair's poem on Mont-Saint-Michel, for the short alb with narrow sleeves worn by bishops, cardinals and protonotaries.^[8]

Semantic evolution

From 1265 it also named a short tunic or smock worn by men and women, mostly of the common people, which peasants kept wearing until the 18th century, and in some provinces into the 19th; this sense now belongs to history.^[3][4][8] Littré quotes a 14th-century record of a woman's roquet ou cotte put on to go to the fields.^[2]

In 1698 it was used of the ceremonial cape of the peers of England.^[8][3] Voltaire used it in 1765 for a bishop himself, a use now gone.^[3][4] The Anglo-Norman rochet, recorded from the early 13th century, ranged from a loose tunic to the church vestment.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1170 – Guillaume de Saint-Pair uses it of a bishop's short alb.^[8]
• 1265 – It names a short tunic worn by men and women.^[3][4]
• 13th century – Spelt rocket in the Chronique de Reims.^[2]
• 1698 – Used of the ceremonial cape of English peers.^[8][3]
• 1765 – Voltaire uses it to mean a bishop.^[3][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (history) A short tunic worn in the Middle Ages.^[10][11][8]
2. A surplice with narrow sleeves worn by bishops and some other clergy, such as canons.^[10][12][8]
3. The ceremonial cape of the peers of England.^[10][2]
4. (dated) Les rochets: the bishops.^[2][3]

rochet² ratchet

Pronunciation

• /ʁɔ.ʃɛ/^[1]

Forms

rochet m (plural rochets)^[1] Also spelt rocquet from about 1560 into the 18th century.^[3][6]

Etymology

The word for the ratchet is of uncertain origin.^[3] The usual explanation, Wartburg's, takes it as from Frankish *rokko (“distaff”) with the diminutive suffix -et, applied by a comparison of shape to the end of a jousting lance.^{[6][8][3][13]} The Frankish word is a masculine variant of Gothic *rukka (“distaff”), the form behind Italian rocca and Spanish rueca; Old High German rocko and German Rocken (“distaff”) belong to the same family.^{[3][6][8][14]}

Because the French word never meant “distaff”, Pierre Guiraud, who saw the rochet as a small disc rather than a rod, preferred to reconstruct Vulgar Latin *rotica, from rota (“wheel”).^[3][5] Meyer-Lübke's REW takes the sense “spool” from rocchetto, a derivative of the Gothic word.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is recorded from the early 13th century for the blunt tip at the end of a courtly lance.^[3][5] The TLFi's first record, in Jacques Bretel's Tournoi de Chauvency (1285), is the toothed head of a jousting lance, made to catch the opponent's armour.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century it was the iron head of a jousting lance with its point blunted so that it could not kill.^[3] By comparison with that toothed head, it came to mean the toothed end of a curved spring (Paré's rocquet, 1564), then a wheel with teeth that a pawl lets turn one way only, alone in clockmaking (1752) and in roue à rochet, which the TLFi dates to the Académie of 1778 and the DHLF to 1875.^[8][3][6]

The sense “spinning bobbin for silk” (1669) comes later, though it recalls the supposed old sense “distaff”.^[6][3][8] English took the word in the 1650s as rochet, later ratchet, from French rochet “bobbin, spindle”.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – First record, for the blunted tip of a lance.^[5][3]
• 1285 – Jacques Bretel uses it for the toothed head of a jousting lance.^[8][10]
• 1564 – Paré's rocquet is the toothed end of a curved spring.^[8]
• 1650s – English rochet, later ratchet, is borrowed.^[15]
• 1669 – It names a spinning bobbin for silk.^[8][6][10]
• 1752 – Used in clockmaking for a toothed wheel.^[8][3]
• 1778 – The Académie records roue à rochet.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. (history) The toothed iron head of a jousting lance.^[8]
2. (technical) A bobbin in spinning on which silk is wound, shorter and thicker than the usual ones.^[10][12][8]
3. (mechanics) Roue à rochet: a ratchet wheel, a toothed wheel that a pawl lets turn in one direction only.^[10][12][8]
4. (materials science) A loading in which plastic strain grows with each cycle.^[16]

Word family

• rochette