On 20/08/2016 at 7:38 AM, Lisa Shock said:IIRC, 'lady' is from Saxon laf-dian or loaf-carrier. -The lady of the house was in charge of the bread and/or dough.
And from two foods into one, sausage is a portmanteau word for sow & sage.
Nearly right on "lady". It comes from Old English hláf meaning "bread", loaf + the root dg meaning "to knead", so "loaf-kneader" rather than "loaf-carrier".
I'm afraid the sow + sage is an amusing but nonsensical folk etymology. There is zero evidence for such an origin. "Sausage" comes ultimately from Latin and meant "salted" or "preserved by salting".
About 30 years ago, a colleague and I looked into this with the vague idea of writing a paper about it. We gave up when we realised just how many words are derived from foods and how food terms have taken on figurative meanings which have become naturalised. Also to be considered are the number of words where the meaning has changed.
Take "meat", for example. Originally it just meant "food", but then narrowed to mean "the flesh of animals as food" then just "the flesh of animals". Then it widened again to include things like the flesh of nuts. Then it could mean "a meal". And many more meanings.
Not to mention the many figurative uses of "meat" such as the sexual sense of "meat market".
"Fruit" is also linguistically complex.
Interestingly, the same thing happens in unrelated languages such as Chinese.
Anyway my contribution for now is "carnival". From Latin via Italian - "carne" meaning "meat" and levāre "leaving". So, it originally referred to the act of leaving out meat at Lent, then transferred to the associated festive activities.
