handsel

Pronounced: HAN-sel, noun/verb

Notes: Also “hansel”; sounded like a character in a fairy tale to me

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Yesterday’s word

The word provender is

• dry food for domestic animals; feed
• food; victuals

First usage

Our word came into English around 1300

Background / Comments

I think I’ve run across both meanings of the word; as I noted yesterday, I included this word because I found the meaning interesting: when it first came into English, it referred to a stipend that a clergyman received from his cathedral or collegiate church (also called prebend), but it didn’t take long for the word to acquire the current meaning. Our word usually shows up in articles by food and travel writers. Our word came from the Middle English word provendre, which came from the Old French word, which was a variant of provende (prebend; provender); which came from the Medieval Latin word prōbenda, which is an alteration of praebenda (prebend), which (probably) came from the Latin word prōvidēre (provide; to look out for).