From loaf to lingo - bread in everyday language
Bread was historically so important to human society that it appears in all sorts of interesting linguistic places. To celebrate Real Bread Week, we’re sharing some of our favourite bready facts from the English language.
The origin of the English words ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ are related to bread. The Old English word for bread was hlaf (still retained in ‘loaf’). It was part of the compound words Hlaford (from ‘bread guardian’) and Hlafdige (‘bread kneader’) which were shortened to ‘Lord and Lady’.
Bread was essential for survival, like money is today, and that parallel is reflected in modern English where we still talk about ‘bread winners’ and ‘bread makers’ with both ‘bread’ and ‘dough’ being slang terms for ‘money’.
‘Bread’ also appears in various guises in Cockney rhyming slang including ‘loaf of bread’ (head), ‘bread and honey’ (money), and ‘brown bread’ (dead).
The word ‘companion’ is not simply a friend or associate; from Latin ‘cum’ (with) and ‘pane’ (bread) the word literally means someone with whom you eat or share bread.
In the English regions, the word that someone uses for a small, round loaf of bread can identify where they’re from, be it roll, bun, cob, teacake, barm, bap or batch. Which all goes to show that, in English at least, bread really is ‘baked’ into our language.
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