lord, lady, and loaf

We don't refer to lords much any more, but one does often hear the term lady to this day. When I stumbled across these words in the dictionary, I found their etymology particularly interesting, so I thought that I would share.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) defines lord as "a master, a ruler". The SOED also tells us that it apparently came from the Old English word hlāford, which comes from a contraction of hlāfweard from Germanic, from the base of loaf + ward. Of course, loaf means "bread", or "a portion of bread baked in one mass"; while ward means "protection, defence, control". So, a lord is a person who is in charge of controling the bread (food) of the people; the one who oversees its distribution.

What does this mean for lady, then? Well, the SOED tells us that lady was simply "a designation for a woman (or girl)", but goes on to mention that in Old English, it often refered to "a mistress in relation to servants; the female head of a household" or "a woman to whom obedience or feudal homage is due: the feminine designation corresponding to lord". Lady came from Old English hlˉæfdīġe (sorry, I couldn't figure out how to get the bar over the 'ash'), which comes from hlāf (there's that 'loaf' again) + the Germanic base meaning 'knead'.

So, a lady, then, is the one who makes and provides the food, and the lord is the one who controls it. Who'd have thought that lords, ladies, and loaves were all so closely connected?