Etymon #13
Clan to tribe
Borrowed from Scottish Gaelic, the word entered English in 1513, in a translation of a Latin classic by a Scottish poet. Its original sense was nothing to do with what the word now describes: it named a cry.
The word's path runs back through two languages. Scottish Gaelic took it from Old Irish, where it was a compound of two ancient roots: one meaning 'army, host', the other meaning 'cry, shout'. The form first appeared in English in 1513, when Gavin Douglas, a Scottish poet and later Bishop of Dunkeld, completed the first full English translation of Virgil's Aeneid. At least four different spelling variants appeared in print between 1513 and 1700 before the settled form emerged. By 1704 the sense had begun to shift from a martial cry to a phrase associated with a person or cause, but the modern meaning was still a century away.
The earliest meaning was a battle cry. On Highland, Border, and Irish battlefields, a clansman would shout his own surname, or the name of his gathering place, as he ran into the fight. The cry was both rallying call and recognition signal: it raised the spirits of his fellows and identified him as one of their own. In the confusion of close-quarters combat, the cry told a man who fought beside him and who fought against him.
The same Proto-Indo-European root appears in English words including GARRULOUS and CARE. All three trace back to an ancient word for a call or cry, though the senses have travelled far apart.
