travailler

Forms

travailler (present participle travaillant; past participle travaillié; first-person singular present travail)^[1]

• travaillier, traveillier, travellier, travillier, traveiller, travailer, travaler^[1][2][3][4]

Van Daele lists -eillier, -ellier and -illier as regional endings.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *tripāliō (“to torture”),^[1][6][7][8] a verb formed on Late Latin tripālium (“instrument of torture”).^[9][10] The FEW notes that the noun is recorded as trepalium in the acts of the Council of Auxerre of 582, and takes it to be a frame of three stakes, from tri- (“three”) and Latin pālus (“stake”).^[9] The noun survived only in Gallo-Romance, as the name of the frame in which a horse is held for shoeing.^[9] The DHLF also reports P. Guiraud's proposal of a crossing with a Romance verb from trabicula (“small beam”).^[8]

Related verbs are Old Occitan trebalhar "to torment" and Spanish trabajar, which took the sense "to work" from French,^[7] and Portuguese trabalhar.^[11] Italian travagliare is a loan from French.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Chanson de Roland, about 1100, with the forms traveillet and travaillent, in the sense "to torment, cause (someone) suffering".^[12][13][14] Greimas dates the Roland to 1080.^[15]

Semantic evolution

Bloch and Wartburg note that "to torment, trouble, suffer", especially of a woman about to give birth, were the verb's only senses until the 16th century.^[7] It was used of a condemned man under torture from about 1155, of a woman in labour from about 1165 and of a dying man from about 1190.^[8] Chrétien de Troyes uses it of love: Einsi travaille Amors Fenice, Mes cist travauz li est delice "So Love torments Fenice, but this torment is a delight to her".^[2][14] The reflexive "to take pains, strive" is recorded from about 1165, and working a material, such as flax, from about 1200.^[14]

From 1507 the verb took the place of ouvrer as the ordinary word for "to work",^[7] and modern French travailler has kept that sense.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1100 – traveillet in the Chanson de Roland.^[12][16][14]
• before 1165 – the first Anglo-Norman record the AND cites.^[3]
• c. 1165 – of a woman in labour.^[8]
• c. 1165 – the reflexive "to take pains".^[14]
• c. 1176 – travaille in Chrétien de Troyes's Cligès.^[2][14]
• c. 1200 – of working flax in the Poème moral.^[14]
• 1507 – "to work", replacing ouvrer.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. to torment, make suffer, harass.^[2][3]
2. to tire, wear out (by effort).^[14][2]
3. to torture.^[14][3]
4. (intransitive and reflexive) to suffer, toil, take pains.^[17][14]
5. to be in labour, suffer the pains of childbirth.^[15][3]
6. to work (a material).^[14]
7. (Anglo-Norman) to travel.^[3][18]

Anglo-Norman

The AND first cites the verb from before 1165 and lists spellings from travailer and travayler to traviller and traveller.^[3] Its insular senses include "to sue in a court of justice" and "to travel (a distance)".^[3] Rothwell points out that Godefroy has no example of the sense "travel" and Tobler–Lommatzsch only two, one of them doubtful, while Anglo-French has the verb in that sense abundantly from the last quarter of the 12th century and the noun from the middle of the 13th.^[18] Middle English travailen meant "to toil" and, by 1300, "to make a journey", and English travel is a variant of English travail that kept the second sense.^[19]

Word family

• travail

Descendants

• Lorrain traiveiller^[1]
• Middle French travailler (→ French travailler)^[1]
• Norman travaillier^[1]
• Walloon travayî^[1]
• Middle English travaillen (borrowed; → English travail)^[1]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch and the DÉCT head the verb travaillier, the AND and the DMF travailler.^{[20][2][3][21]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. travaillier
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. travailler
4. ^ 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
5. ^ Van Daele, Hilaire, Petit dictionnaire de l'ancien français, Paris: Garnier, p. 501
6. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 13/2:287
7. ^ a b c d e Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 686
8. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. travailler
9. ^ a b c Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 13/2:291
10. ^ Gamillscheg, Ernst (1926–1928), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, Heidelberg: Winter, p. 892
11. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh, p. 5358
12. ^ a b UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. RolS
13. ^ 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. travaillier
14. ^ 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
15. ^ a b Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. travaillier
16. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. RolS
17. ^ Foerster, Wendelin; Breuer, Hermann (1914), Kristian von Troyes: Wörterbuch zu seinen sämtlichen Werken, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 268
18. ^ a b Rothwell, William (1993), « The Legacy of Anglo-French: faux amis in French and English »; reprinted on the Anglo-Norman Hub, anglo-norman.net
19. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
20. ^ Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 10:539
21. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. travailler