Etymology Blog

OH, THE HARLOTRY

7/3/2017

The word harlot is a slightly archaic term for "immoral woman" and is often a euphemistc term for "prostitute". However, it didn't always carry that meaning. When harlot entered English around the 1200s CE, it described an "unscrupulous man", occasionally just a "man" in general! The former definition was more used, albeit, and this resulted in the word being extended to cover all kinds of immoral people, and from that just women. The modern definition was cemented when Bible translations in the 1500s used harlot as a translation for "prostitute". Anyway, the word itself came to us from a French word for "male tramp", which took various forms, including harlot, arlot, and herlot. Now, the origin for this is uncertain, but some philologists theorize that it is rooted in the Proto-Germanic harjaz, which meant "army" but also "soldier" (possibly how the "male" definition came about) and would be from PIE ker, also "army". A French word from Proto-Germanic is less common than from Latin, but still frequent because of the muddles of the Franks and all.

4 Comments

Paul Dent

4/18/2021 01:55:16 pm

If nobody can come up with anything earlier, I propose that the origin is the name of William (le batard) The Conqueror's mother, Arlette (1003-1050) who was the Duke of Normandy's mistress ( and he was the father of "le batard" ), having attracted the Duke's attention by hitching her skirts up high while trampling grapes in his courtyard after seeing him watching from the ramparts.
You can imagine the English after the Norman Conquest wishing to cast aspersions on his pedigree by saying "le batard" was the son of an Arlette/ Harlette/ Harlotte/ Harlot who did indeed have that relationship with the Duke of Normandy.

Ryan

7/5/2021 08:02:24 pm

If you're not going to come up with an original thought you should at least cite the originator of your "proposal." Anyway, the Arlette idea was already debunked long before you appropriated it.

Bathsheba Everdene

11/20/2021 05:56:56 pm

The word 'harlot' does come from the French. But this is merely the halfway story.
Just under 3,000 years ago, we find the word in THE BOOK OF RUTH, in the Hebrew Bible 1:6
Harlot comes from CALA כלה which means bride. It also means daughter-in-law.
It took the grammatical form of cala-TAH to mean daughter-in-law of her כלתה
Hebrew is a highly inflected language.

Please note that the C in CALA sometimes takes on an H or KH sound in reading Hebrew.

The Jews, having been banished from their homeland by the Romans in the second century CE, spread over southern Europe, especially the area we now call France. The French language is jam-packed with Hebrew. Although Jews were not speaking Hebrew by this stage, they were a very literate people and read their holy books daily. That is to say: they knew, and used their biblical Hebrew. It is clear that the word HARLOT was used by them and finally incorporated into French as time went by.

Why is etymology riddled with speculation?
Why is there such ignorance (with the exception of Greek and Latin, of course) about roots of words before around 14th century Europe?
Why are Sanskrit and Afro-Asiatic languages never explored by etymologists? After all, there was a great deal of trade going on.

Dandy

12/6/2022 06:51:29 pm

Ryan’s rude …….

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OH, THE HARLOTRY

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