Among my favorite consonant mutations in the evolution of modern English is the split that occurs in many words from the Norman period for which today we have two variants, one with an initial gu-, coming from the Romantic continent, and one with a w-, rooted in the unromantic Anglo-Saxon and Celtic island's prehistory. Thus guerre becomes 'war', guichet becomes 'wicket', 'guarantee' and 'warranty' radiate out from a common source, William becomes the cousin of Guillaume, and wardens and guardians do the same job at different spots in the alphabetical order. This last split is of particular interest. 'Warden' or 'ward' is a consummately Germanic word: it comes from the same root as the modern German Wirt ('innkeeper' or 'barkeeper'), as well as warten ('to wait') and Torwart ('goalie', literally 'gate ward'). In at least one of its original senses a ward is thus the person who tends to the stuff of life, whether food, or drink, or a warm bed. Already attuned to this antiquated notion of wardenship (so unlike the role of a low-end functionary in the American prison system), I was delighted recently to come across, in Cassidy and Ringler's fine edition of Bright's Old English: A Grammar and Reader, the following etymology: the Anglo-Saxon hlaf-ward --literally 'loaf ward' or 'bread guardian'-- would later be shortened to hlaford, and later still to loverd. This would be distilled further, in accordance with some law whose name I do not recall (not Grimm's, anyway) in modern English into 'lord'. A 'lord' (and perhaps even the Lord), is thus the one who watches over the food supply, for which 'bread' stands in by way of synecdoche. 'Lady', in turn, evolves from hlaf-dige: 'bread-kneader'. So the lady makes the bread and the lord guards it, and life goes on.
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