hlāford

Old English hlāford contracted from hlāf (loaf of bread) and weard (guardian, keeper). The hlāford was literally the keeper of the bread — the head of household who controlled the food supply. In a society where grain was the foundation of all nutrition and the ability to feed dependents was the definition of power, the bread-keeper was the lord. The word first appears in Old English texts from around the 9th century CE.

The semantic expansion was rapid and logical: the bread-keeper became the landowner became the feudal overlord became a member of the nobility. By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, lord was already losing its domestic specificity and gaining the broader sense of a person of rank and authority. The Normans brought their own hierarchical vocabulary in French, but lord survived as the English term for the upper stratum.

Lord attached to specific roles: the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Mayor, the Lords of Parliament. It attached to divinity: 'the Lord' as a name for God appears in English Bible translations throughout the medieval period. The House of Lords — Britain's upper legislative chamber — takes its name from this progression from bread-keeper to hereditary aristocrat.

The compound words are everywhere: landlord (the lord of the land), landlady (its female counterpart), lord it over (to assert dominance), My Lord (the form of address for judges). The bread-keeper's descendants are called My Lord in the courts of a country that has largely forgotten what a loaf of bread once meant.