Wild Word Fridays

Now that I’ve been blogging for a few months and am more comfortable with the concept and the process, I hope to establish a Friday feature that will highlight words.  It’s always fun to find new words, odd words, overused words, misused words… 

This Friday’s wild word – words actually – are LADY and LORD.  Wild?  Well not really, but interesting in the historical sense. 

Lady in its oldest form comes from two Old English words – hlaf , which means loaf, and from dige, which refers to one who kneads.  So a lady is a hlafdige – someone who kneads bread.   (Try pronouncing the word without the initial H sound.   You can see why it eventually morphed into lady.)  And I always thought that a lady was that lucky woman who sat there drinking tea while somebody else kneaded the bread.

Lord is also from the Old English hlaf and from weard which means guard.  So the lord isn’t the breadeater, he’s the bread guarder.

Lords and ladies have come a long ways, haven’t they?  I’m just glad somebody invented the bread machine.

Do you have any words you’d like to nominate for Wild Word Fridays?  (And what’s your favorite kind of bread?)