SC - German translation

[Debra Hense]

Haversack is derived from the German Habersack, which literally means oat
bag.  Linguistic derivation is from Middle High German, habere, Old High
German, habaro for oats and sac, bag in both Middle and Old High German from
the Latin saccus.

I suspect OED is looking at the entry of the term into English from the
Austrian and German troops serving with the British Army during the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Bear

> Jessica Tiffin wrote:
> > 
> > "haversack" as a bag used to carry feast gear to feasts.  (The OED
> > references it as a bag used by soldiers to carry their lunch, 18th
> > century).
> 
> Ummm, for what it's worth, and I'm also working from memory, "haver" is
> an Anglo-Saxon term meaning "oat"; I'll have to look through the back
> issues or see if there's an index someplace, but there's an article in
> some issue of PPC about Northern English oatcakes; I _believe_ it
> mentions a reference to havercakes (more of a bannock than a sgian or
> scone; in other words, thicker and possibly leavened) in Langland's
> "Piers the Plowman". Somewhere I also have a text file version of Piers
> Plowman; it is presumably searchable.
> 
> Anyway, if this is correct, it might conceivably mean words like
> havercake, haversack, and haverstraw have some period relevance. I would
> assume that a haversack might have other uses when the oats have been
> used up, rather like the things we can do with potato or flour sacks
> after the potatoes or flour are gone.
> 
> It may also be that the compilers of the OED simply didn't search
> through all the right manuscripts and books in determining the earliest
> known usage in this case -- not unprecedented. 
> 
> Adamantius
> -- 
> Phil & Susan Troy
> 
>