[Sca-cooks] Interesting period words

[Huette von Ahrens]

--- Daniel Myers <edouard at medievalcookery.com>
wrote:

> 
> On Aug 30, 2004, at 11:16 AM,
> <kingstaste at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm probably picking up on something not
> really there, but did the 
> > name come
> > from the actual job description = bake; stir
> ?  (one would think it 
> > would be
> > stirbake, but anyway...)
> > Christianna
> >
> >
> > (1332) Sub.R.Sus.in Sus.RS 10
> >     262:  Muriele le Bakestr'.
> 
> 
>  From the looks of it, it could be an
> abbreviated form of bakestress.  
> Such could even come about in the transcription
> process where a 
> transcriber misses a "shorthand" mark that took
> the place of the "ess" 
> ending.
> 
> - Doc

That is always possible, however, OED says this:

A true feminine form in origin, and used of women
as late as the 16th c.; but already in OE. used
also of men ... and in ME used of both sexes, as
the Vocabularies clearly show: in later use only
masculine, being the regular Northern, and esp. 
Sc, equivalent of baker, in which use it still
lingers dialectically.  In the 16th c. a new
feminine 'Backstr-ess' was formed upon it; cf.
songstress, seamstress. 

So it appears, to me, that the OED doesn't
consider that baxter, and its variants, are a
shorthand form.  In fact, looking at the examples
of songstress and seamstress, both do not appear
in these forms until after the 16th century.
Songster appears first in 1000, but songstress
doesn't appear until 1701.  Seamster/sempster
appears in 995, but seamstress doesn't appear
until 1644.

Being that English is such a fluid language, it
appears to my un-academic eyes that there was
a shift in the use from -ster to -stress 
somewhere in the late 16th century.

Huette

=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.


		
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush