Where does “battlefield” come from?
Battlefield comes from English battle and English field, with battle from Old English batell, Old French -ier, Latin -are, and Latin -arius, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰew-.
battlefield (English): The area where a land battle is or was fought,...
Definitions
- The area where a land battle is or was fought,...
Ancestry of “battlefield”, step by step
battlefield traces back through two separate lines of ancestry.
via English field
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | field | A land area free of woodland, cities, and towns;... |
| 2 | Middle English | feeld | A field; The countryside; empty land that... |
| 3 | Old English | feld | field |
| 4 | Proto-West Germanic | felþu | field |
| 5 | Proto-Germanic | felþuz | field, plain |
| 6 | Proto-Indo-European | pelh₂- | to approach |
| 7 | Proto-Indo-European | pel- | to cover, to wrap; skin, hide, cloth; to fold |
via English Battle
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | Battle | from places in England that have been sites of a battle |
| 2 | Middle English | batel | Alternative form of batayle; flourishing |
| 3 | Old English | batol | improving, tending to be good |
| 4 | Old English | batian | to fatten, to get fatter; to improve, to get... |
| 5 | Old English | -ol | Used to form suffixes denoting inclination or... |
| 6 | Proto-Germanic | -ulaz | Forms adjectives from verbs meaning "doing" or... |