The unbroken etymology of “bread”

Some preliminary conclusions about our subject appeared last week (see the post for November 7, 2018). Those are not particularly promising. It appears that once upon a time the product we associate with bread was called hlaif-; its modern reflex (continuation) in English is loaf. What that hlaif– looked like is unknown. In any case, some time later, bread appeared and was called brauð– (ð = th in Engl. the). The hyphens after hlaif– and brauð– mean that those are the roots of the two words, with their endings omitted. According to the data of archeology, the earliest cereal product people consumed was some kind of pancakes, but of course, we have no idea what those pancakes were called. The cruelest law of etymology has it that, if we don’t know the properties of the object under discussion, we have no chance of discovering the origin of its name. Therefore, all derivations of loaf and bread are and will remain moderately intelligent guesswork.

In our case, we are doomed to examine roots, trying to decide which of them might fit what we today call bread. The favorite of most dictionaries is the idea that bread is related to the verb brew, because the word brauð– allegedly designated leavened bread, and yeast is brewed. Bread made with yeast was well-known in Ancient Egypt, but this fact tells us nothing about the food industry among the earliest Germanic speakers. Anyway, bread is a Germanic word of relatively narrow distribution. Unlike bread, brew has wide Indo-European connections: Classical Greek broûtas “beer,” Latin defrutum “boiled must,” and Old Irish bruthe “broth.” Naturally, Engl. broth belongs here too. Beer, must, and broth are “brewed,” but bread is not, even if we insist that the product called brauð– was prepared with yeast.  A new product can be called after its ingredient, but what would the meaning of bread have been? “A food made with yeast”?

Here is a brewer. Next, you will see a baker. Are they related? Image credit: Hook Norton Brewery by Matt Hamm. CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr.

James A. H. Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, did not think much of the yeast etymology of bread and followed a suggestion of the great German philologist Eduard Sievers. The original name of “bread,” both of them explained, appears to have meant “pieces, bits, fragments.” According to the evidence of several Old English glosses, two Latin words for “bits, morsels” were translated into Old English as brēadru and bitan (both forms are plural).  Murray concluded that loaf had been used for an undivided article, while bread designated pieces of the same product.  When the first volume of the OED appeared, one of the reviewers celebrated the fact that bakers and brewers had been shown to go different ways. The reviewer was too fast and allowed his enthusiasm to run away with him.

Here is a baker. Are they related? Image credit: Wily Jaciw, master baker at Boudin Bakery in the Fisherman’s Wharf district of San Francisco, California by Carol M. Highsmith. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

A word, allegedly supporting this etymology, is German Brosamen “crumbs.” Its root is bros-. (The singular exists but is rarely used, for what is one crumb?). Brosamen poses no difficulties: bros- is related to an ancient verb meaning “to break” (Old English had brēotan, a word now lost, except in the root of brittle). Its German synonym Brocken is related to another verb of the same meaning (German brechen, Engl. break). No direct connection between Brosamen and brauð– (Engl. bread, German Brot) seems to exist. It also looks odd that a special word designating pieces of bread would have ousted an old “respectable” name of a traditional “unbroken” product. For example, pita, whether from Germanic or Aramaic, appears to have meant “bit,” but it did not supersede any of its rivals. More probably, the word for “bread” could also be used for “pieces of bread.”

A scribe working on glosses (as we think). Image credit: Accueil scribe invert by Philippe Kurlapski. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Still another attempt connects bread with the verb to brook “to endure.” In English, it is archaic and occurs only with a negation (I cannot brook this behavior).  It once meant “to use, to enjoy” (German brauchen means “to use”). According to a rather weak hypothesis, bread is related to brook and once meant “a product one uses (enjoys)”. One wishes for a more concrete tie between the name and the object.

Unexpectedly, the pivotal word that may shed light on the etymology of bread is the compound bee-bread (Old Engl. bēo–brēad). It means and meant “honeycomb.” The only way to interpret this word, which has exact analogs in two other Old Germanic languages, is to gloss it as “bees’ food.” This compound makes some traditional hypotheses suspicious and even useless. Bread must have meant “food, sustenance, as it still does in our daily bread and other similar phrases, though some nicer shades of meaning escape us. For instance, meat also meant “food,” as it still does in the phrase it’s meat and drink to me.

“A thing brewed” and “a thing broken” begin to look like rather improbable original senses. We need a meaning that will make it clear how brauð-, admittedly, an innovation, differed from hlaif-.  “A thing enjoyed” sounds too vague, and from a linguistic point of view bread and brook are hardly related. Was hlaif- a liquid or polenta-like food, as I suggested last week, while brauð– was solid? What was the technology of making bread? Or is bread a borrowing from the neighbors who knew something about cereals the Germanic speakers did not know? A parallel process would have been the borrowing of hlaif– by the Slavs (that is why khleb has no Slavic etymology).

It remains for me to say what people can find in dictionaries. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology repeats the hypothesis given in the OED but adds the cautious perhaps. Since that time, the lexicographers at the OED must have discarded Murray’s idea, for The Shorter Oxford now says: “Origin unknown.” Skeat, at the end of his life, was noncommittal. The Old English word, he only wrote, “sometimes means ‘bit’ or ‘piece’.” Weekley supported Murray. The Century Dictionary and Henry Cecil Wyld (The Universal Dictionary of the English Language), both known for their excellent etymologies, advocated the brewing idea, without offering any discussion. Surprisingly, the 2013 etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic does the same (a brief statement without a line of comment), and, unfortunately, the same holds for some German and Icelandic reference books, though the latest etymological dictionary of German (Kluge by Seebold) gives an unusually detailed survey of the main opinions and refuses to choose the best one. However, it seems that Seebold favors the brook/brauchen idea.

Origin unknown? Yes, alas. Only food for thought, but I am sorry for a lay reader who thinks naively that a solid dictionary contains the truth about solid foods.

Featured image credit: Breaking bread, juice, dinner party, Broadview townhouse, Seattle, Washington, USA by Wonderlane. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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