It is mid-afternoon and the editorial team of the
Anglo-Norman Dictionary is producing XML files of the latest batch of new
entries for N-. They have been sitting in front of their computers and processing
the data for about six hours now, and their typing fingers are noticeably
slowing down. It is still too early to call it a day, but minds are inevitably beginning
to wander. Fortunately, a resolution for the growing three-o’clock malaise is
found in the Oxford English Dictionary under the word ‘nuncheon’, that is, ‘a
drink taken in the afternoon; a light refreshment between meals; a snack’.
‘Nuncheon’ is a word labelled as archaic or regional – the
sort of vocabulary encountered in nineteenth-century novels: Sir Walter Scott still
wrote ‘I came to get my four-hours’ nunchion from you’ in his novel Fortunes Of Nigel (1822), and in
Charlotte Mary Yonge’s Love and Life (1880)
a sister tells her siblings ‘I will give you some bread and cheese and gingerbread
for noonchin’.
The word has a suggested etymology which traces it back to an
Old English compound of ‘noon’ and ‘shench’. Its first half, ‘noon’, is derived
from Classical Latin ‘nona’ (DMLBS nonus
1929a), meaning the ‘ninth hour of the day’. In Roman and consequently ecclesiastical
time-keeping this would originally have corresponded with 3 o’clock in the
afternoon, although in the course of the Middle Ages the word became more and
more used (both in Middle English and Anglo-Norman) to refer to an earlier time
of day (see AND second edition sub none1, forthcoming). It has been
suggested that monastic orders, who had their lunch after the ‘ninth hour’
liturgy, were inclined to perform that service earlier and earlier, so that the
term ‘noon’ eventually became associated with midday. In ‘nuncheon’, the first
half of the word has retained its original meaning of mid-afternoon. The second
half, Old English ‘shench’, can be translated as ‘a cupful, drink (of liquor)’.
It is derived from the Old English verb ‘scencean’ (‘to pour out a liquid’), which
is still found in Modern German and Modern Dutch (as ‘schenken’) and even
Modern English (as ‘to skink’, labelled archaic or Scottish). Somehow that word
became shortened, losing the final ‘ch’ or ‘k’, to produce the second half of
‘nuncheon’.
The only explanation the OED can provide for the modification
of the word ‘shench’ in the second half of ‘nuncheon’, is that this may have
happened through similarity with words such as ‘puncheon’ and ‘truncheon’. It is
also pointed out that a semantic and formal analogy with the word ‘luncheon’ is
almost inevitable. Even so, this does not resolve the matter as, also the
ending of ‘luncheon’ is etymologically unclear, and there is not enough chronological
evidence to determine which word may have affected which. Although ‘lunch’ is
usually considered an abbreviated form of ‘luncheon’, the OED can only see the
etymology of the word as ‘related in some way’ to ‘lunch n.2’, originally
meaning ‘a thick piece, hunch or hunk’, which then acquired an apparently
superfluous and meaningless ‘-eon’ suffix. While this leaves us with a not
entirely satisfactory or even plausible explanation, it should be noted that the
Old English ‘shench’ survived in Middle English with a great number of variant
spellings, such as ‘chins’, ‘shins’ ‘sens’, etc. (see MED shenche) which all
shift the final velar consonant forward in pronunciation to a sibilant. Forms
like these may well have produced an incorrectly derived singular form ‘cheon’.
The word is unmistakably English, but it appears
surprisingly late in a truly English context. The earliest such attestation,
both in the OED and the MED, is from 1422-23, taken from the account book of
the London Brewers’ Craft, and lists a payment received by two carpenters for
making a gutter, which includes money for their nuncheons:
‘Item, to .ij. carpenters be .j. day, to ech of hem with her
nonsenches .viij. d. ob., for to
make þe forseid goter, .xvij. d.’
There are a several earlier examples, but these all use the
word in the context of a different language. It appears as a vernacular word in
a Latin context from 1260-75 onwards, for example, in the account of Bury St.
Edmunds, where a payment is listed, this time to the carters, for their
nuncheon:
‘Memorandum quod carectarius habet preter hoc a pascha usque
festum Sancti Michaelis qualibet septimana ad noonschench j.d.ob.’
In some instances, the word was even given a Latin ending,
justifying the DMLBS entry nonshenchus:
in a document from 1375, among payments listed, one states:
‘in .ij.
nouncheynchis ad dictos Nicholaum et famulum suum, .iij. d.’
In a similar but later example (from the Church Wardens’
Accounts of Saint Michael’s Church in Oxford, 1426-27), ‘Item, pro le nunsens
operariorum, vii d.’, the Latin scribe indicates that he is aware that the word
is vernacular, but by preceding it by the definite article ‘le’ gives the
impression of treating it as a French/Anglo-Norman word.
Finally, also the AND’s source material provides three
instances of the word, used in a fully Anglo-Norman context. The earliest of
these (from the Exe Bridge wardens’ accounts) is from 1349:
‘Item en .iiij. carpenters tote la semaygne et lour
nonsench: .vij. s. .viij. [d.]’
A second
example is found in an entry of the account rolls of the wardens of Rochester
Bridge 1412-13:
‘Item payé a ij
carpounters pur amender lé benchez et lez fenesteres et auteres necessaryis de
lez rentes de Wamfforde par .vij. jours pernaunt checun par le jour .viij. d.
et checun jour a leur nounschenche checun .j. d.’
Once more, a payment is made
for the nuncheons of three carpenters, included in their days work. (Incidentally,
most of the above examples, which are all very similar in nature, suggest that
the medieval ‘nuncheon’ may have been more of a proper meal in the middle of a
working day, rather than just the drink or refreshment as is suggested by the
etymology and the dictionary definitions.)
In other words, what is clearly an English or Old English
word first emerges in Latin documents as a ‘foreign’ vernacular loanword in the
thirteenth century. We then see it appearing in mid-fourteenth-century
Anglo-Norman texts, where it is used as a ‘normal’ French word, and a few
decades later in Latin in the same way. It is only half a century later, around
1422-23) that we have the first fully English documents preserved that use the
word. As such, the word is a perfect example of the hierarchy and/or chronology
of the three medieval languages and the of the documents in which they are
preserved.
After their nuncheon, the Anglo-Norman Dictionary editorial
team return to their XML editor and continue work on the final stages of the revised
edition of N-.
(GDW)
(GDW)
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