Etymon #20
Outside root shared
Borrowed from Old French, the word entered English in the late thirteenth century. Chaucer's Wife of Bath used it in The Canterbury Tales around 1395, when speaking of planting a blessed tree.
Before reaching English, the word had a long life in Latin and Anglo-Norman French. By the twelfth century, post-classical Latin had passed it into Old French, and Anglo-Norman speakers in England had been using their northern variant for two centuries before the word crossed into Middle English. Behind it lay an even older Germanic root.
The earliest meaning was an enclosure. The post-classical Latin form was probably originally an adjective: 'of or relating to an enclosure'. The deeper Germanic root named any fenced or walled space, protected from what lay beyond.
While the word travelled through France, the same Germanic root took a more direct route into English. YARD, an enclosed space, came directly from Old English in the medieval period. ORCHARD, the enclosed plot of fruit-bearing trees, was already in Old English by the year 1000, a compound built on the same Germanic root for 'enclosure'. Both descend from the same ancient ancestor.
