One of the things I got from Sesame & Lilies which is new to me is that Lady means bread giver, or loaf giver, & that Lord means maintainer of laws
Well, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Ruskin was partly right. According to that authority Lady is derived from the Old English words for bread (loaf) + knead, though it cautions that the etymology is not very plausible with regard to sense
Lord is a combination of loaf & ward – or bread keeper. Nothing to do with law. It meant the head of a household in his relation to the servants and dependents who eat his bread, but it had already acquired a wider application before the literary period of Old English
The association with bread set me thinking about our modern honours system
Not bread in the slang sense – not cash for honours
But one joke is that the only thing a title is good for is getting a table in the best restaurants. Bread takers, in other words
Now I appreciate that many who are honoured have given sterling public or charitable service
But it would do no harm to bring back something of the notion that the acquisition of an honour brings with it the idea of some kind of obligation to the giving of bread (service & charity)
