noble

Forms

noble^[1]

• nouble^[2][3]

Godefroy cites the spelling nouble from a document of 1360 written at Bordeaux.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nōbilis (“known, famous; well-born”).^[4][5][6][1] The Latin adjective is formed from nōscō (“to get to know”) with the suffix -bilis, so that it first meant "knowable", then "well known".^[1][6] Gamillscheg dates the French word to the 11th century and derives it from the Latin word in the senses "recognisable, renowned, noble".^[7]

The TLFi and the DHLF separate two borrowings: the sense "excelling in worth or merit" came from Classical Latin, while "belonging to the nobility" seems to come from Medieval Latin, where the word was first used of the hereditary aristocracy of some Germanic peoples (the Burgundian law code of 501–518) and later of the feudal nobility (1012–1023).^[4][6]

Old French also had a form nobile, about 1135 in the Couronnement de Louis, and once nobilie in the Roland.^[4] The TLFi gives two explanations: a half-learned development through Vulgar Latin *nobilius, or the Latin word with its stress moved in Gallo-Romance, while the FEW treats the Roland's form as isolated.^[4] The headword's form replaced it.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Vie de saint Alexis, which the DEAF dates to about 1090 and the TLFi to about 1050.^[8][4] There the word praises a person: the father buys his son filie d'un noble Franc “the daughter of a noble Frank”.^[4][9]

Semantic evolution

The oldest sense is a judgement of worth: a person who excels others in merit, as in the Roland's Noble baron ad ci! “here is a noble baron!”.^[4] From about 1160 it is used of a horse, and about 1165 also of abstract and inanimate things, such as noble chevalerie and la noble cité de Troie in Benoît de Sainte-Maure.^[4][6] In the Roman de Renart, about 1179, Noble is the name of the lion, the king of the beasts.^[4][10]

The social sense, "belonging to the nobility", is first recorded in a Cambrai charter of 1216, noble homme beside chevalier.^[4] In Middle French the word was used of the "noble" organs of the body (1314), of noble language (1370–1372), and as a noun for a member of the nobility (1369–1372).^[4][6] The noun naming a coin, from 1360, was borrowed back from English, where the noble was a gold coin struck under Edward III.^[6] The modern word is French noble.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1090 – noble in the Vie de saint Alexis (about 1050 by the TLFi's dating).^[8][9][4]
• c. 1100 – noble baron in the Chanson de Roland.^[4][11]
• 1121–1125 – the first Anglo-Norman record cited by the AND.^[12]
• c. 1135 – the form nobile in the Couronnement de Louis.^[4]
• c. 1179 – Noble as the name of the lion in the Roman de Renart.^[4]
• 1216 – noble homme, a man of the nobility, in a charter from Cambrai.^[4]
• 1360 – the noun for the English gold coin.^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. noble, excelling in worth or merit; brave, illustrious (of persons).^[4][12][13]
2. splendid, magnificent, of excellent quality (of animals and things).^[4][12]
3. of noble birth, belonging to the nobility.^[12][10][4]

Noun

1. a person of noble birth, a member of the nobility.^[12][10]
2. (Anglo-Norman) the noble, an English gold coin.^[12]

Anglo-Norman

The AND first cites the word from 1121–1125, with senses ranging from "honourable, brave, illustrious" to "of noble birth".^[12] As a noun it named a member of the nobility and the noble, an English gold coin introduced by Edward III in 1344 and worth half a mark, with the half-noble worth a quarter of a mark.^[12] Middle English had the adjective from about 1200 and the noun from about 1300, from the Old French word.^[14]

Word family

• noblece
• noblei
• noblement
• ennoblir

Descendants

• Middle French noble (→ French noble)^[4]
• Middle English noble (borrowed; → English noble)^[14]
• Middle Dutch nobel (borrowed)^[1]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch heads the adjective noble and the noun separately,^[13][15] and the DMF treats the noun naming the coin as a separate word.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 10:203
3. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u 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. ^ Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 473
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. noble
7. ^ Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 688
8. ^ a b Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. noble
9. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas (2025), Old Gallo-Romance Corpus, github (the earliest Gallo-Romance texts, lemmatised; texts by siglum), p. AlexisZ
10. ^ a b c Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 6:678
11. ^ Stein, Achim; Kunstmann, Pierre; Gleßgen, Martin-D., eds., Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam, version 4 (lemmatised corpus of Old French texts, after A. Dees), Universität Stuttgart, github.com/michaniets/NCA (texts by DEAF siglum), p. RolS
12. ^ a b c d e f g h Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. noble
13. ^ a b Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 6:677
14. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
15. ^ Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 6:680
16. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. noble