So to find out that the word has the humblest of etymological origins was a surprise. David Crystal’s new book The Story of English in 100 Words points out that lord comes from loaf. How did the word used to denote ultimate sovereignty derive from a lump of bread?
The Oxford English Dictionary’s thorough history of the word shows its development. It started out in Old English as hláford – a combination of hláf (bread or loaf) and ward (keeper). The hláford was the keeper of bread, or the head of the household whohad responsibility to feed his servants (those who eat his bread, or hláfǽta (bread eaters). Eventually shortened to ‘lord’ (by the 15th century this spelling was common), it was shorn of its original meaning and elevated in importance.
Other Germanic languages did not follow this etymological development, but share the root in some of their words. So an old German word for ‘employer’ is brotherr,or brot herr – bread-lord (and similarly archaic to the term ‘master and servant’ in English). In Scandinavian languages ‘meat-mother’ means the mistress of servants (matmoder in Swedish, madmoderin Danish and matmóđir in Icelandic).