Ceorlfolc

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The class of ordinary free commoners, the peasantry, of early Anglo-Saxon England as a body of people
2. A term for the body of lower-ranking free men in Anglo-Saxon society who were not nobles
3. The collective mass of ordinary freemen of Old English times, set apart from the nobility and thegns

Etymology: "Ceorlfolc" is an Old English compound made of "ceorl," a freeman of the lower rank, and "folc," meaning people or nation. The "ceorl" was the ordinary free peasant of Anglo-Saxon England: he held land, owed military service and taxes, and sat in the local assembly, yet stood below the thegn, or nobleman. Its cognate in modern English, "churl," shows the drift. Over the centuries the word slid from a term for a free farmer to a term for a rude, miserly person, while "ceorl" itself fell out of use. "Ceorlfolc" therefore names the body of such free commoners taken together, as opposed to the nobility or the enslaved. It appears in Old English texts that distinguish the classes of society, and its formation is transparent: a collective noun built from the class term and the word for people, much like "folk" compounds elsewhere in the Germanic languages.