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SON OF A PACKSADDLE

1/28/2020

2 Comments

 
The word bastard was borrowed at some point during the mid-fourteenth century from Old French, when it had the very specific meaning of "recognized illegitimate child of a nobleman". Later on, it referred to any kid born out of wedlock, and that eventually took on a pejorative sense, giving us the even more frequently used definitions of "terrible person" or "mongrel". Interestingly, a weakened connotation of "male friend" also emerged in the twentieth century, to be used in phrases such as lucky bastard and poor bastard. The Old French noun most likely originated from the phrase fils de bast, which meant "packsaddle son" (a "packsaddle" being a kind of traveling bed that bastards were thought to be conceived on), and the suffix -ard. Bast​ might trace to a Latin word meaning "carry".
2 Comments
Jeremy Keller link
6/29/2022 10:02:52 pm

It could be as if the child was conceived within the douvet of a pack saddle.

Please search Google for lunar mountaineering and my BBC link is about the largest known mountain in our solar system.

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Gabriele Schubert
3/7/2025 03:26:27 pm

Hello ~ I am looking for a definition of "douvet" that is different from duvet (down-filled comforter).

The Italian cashmere brand Loro Piana said it sources cashmere from "the douvet of Mongolian goats" (and it says it shears kid goats). Could douvet refer to the downy fuzz of kid goats; or to the kid goats themselves?

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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