Dictionary Definition
churl
Noun
1 a crude uncouth ill-bred person lacking culture
or refinement [syn: peasant, barbarian, boor, Goth, tyke, tike]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
From the Old English ċeorl.Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -ɜː(r)l
Noun
Translations
boorish person
- German: Kerl
*Spanish: montañero
freedman in a þéod
- German: Kerl
See also
External links
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/anglia/wordhoard.html http://www.normannii.org/thiubok/thews.htm http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~catshaman/23erils2/0Anglo.htmExtensive Definition
A churl (etymologically the same name as Charles /
Carl and Old High
German „karal“), in its earliest Anglo-Saxon
meaning, was simply "a man", but the word soon came to mean "a
non-servile peasant",
still spelt ceorle, and denoting the lowest rank of freemen.
According to the Oxford
English Dictionary it later came to mean the opposite of the
nobility and royalty, "a
common person". Says
Chadwick:This
meaning held through the 15th
century, but by then the word had taken on negative overtone,
meaning "a country person" and then "a low fellow". By the 19th
century, a new and pejorative meaning arose,
"one inclined to uncivil or loutish behaviour".
The ceorles of Anglo-Saxon times lived in a
largely free society, and one in which their fealty was principally to their
king. His low status is
shown by his wergild
("man-price"), which over a large part of England was fixed
at 200 shillings (one-sixth that of a thegn). Agriculture was
largely community-based and communal in open-field systems. This
freedom was eventually eroded by the increase in power of feudal lords and the manorial system. Some
scholars argue however that anterior to the encroachment of the
manorial system the ceorles owed various services and rents to
local lords and powers.
In Scandinavian
languages, the word Karl has the same root as churl and means
"man". As Housecarl, it
came back to England. In German,
Kerl is used to describe a somewhat rough and common man, as well
as a (common) soldier. Rígþula, a poem in
the Poetic Edda,
explains the social
classes as originating from the three sons of Ríg: Thrall, Karl and
Earl (Þræl,
Karl and Jarl). This story has been interpreted in the context of
the proposed trifunctional
hypothesis of Proto-Indo-European
society.
The word ceorle in a corrupted form is frequently
found in British
place names, in towns such as Carlton and
Charlton,
meaning "the farm of the churls". Names such as Carl and Charles are derived
from cognates of churl
or ceorle.
See also
churl in German: Karl
churl in Russian: Керлы
churl in Ukrainian: Керли
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Babbitt, Philistine, Silas Marner,
arriviste, bondmaid, bondman, bondslave, bondsman, bondswoman, boor, bounder, bourgeois, cad, captive, chattel, chattel slave, clodhopper, clown, concubine, curmudgeon, debt slave,
epicier, galley slave,
groundling, guttersnipe, helot, homager, hooligan, ill-bred fellow,
liege, liege man, liege
subject, looby, lout, low fellow, miser, mucker, muckworm, niggard, nouveau riche, odalisque, parvenu, peasant, penny pincher, peon, pinchfist, pinchgut, ribald, rough, roughneck, rowdy, ruffian, save-all, scrooge, serf, servant, skinflint, slave, subject, theow, thrall, tightwad, upstart, vassal, villein, vulgarian, vulgarist, yokel