Gestour

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medieval minstrel or storyteller who recited romances and chronicles of heroic deeds before an audience
2. An entertainer in the Middle Ages who told tales of knights, battles and famous exploits, often to listeners at court
3. A teller of heroic romances in medieval times, reciting the great deeds of legendary figures from memory

Etymology: Before it meant anything like a storyteller, this word's root meant "deed." Its ancestor is Latin "gesta," "deeds" or "things done," the plural of "gestum," from "gerere," "to carry out." Old French turned "geste" into a word for a story of heroic deeds, which gave rise to the "chansons de geste," the epic poems of medieval France. Adding the agent suffix "-our" produced "gesteor," one who recounts such tales. English borrowed it in Middle English, and it appears in the sense of a reciter or teller of romances and chronicles. The same root gave English "jest." In Middle English, "geste" or "gest" meant a tale of exploits, and a shift from heroic story to light amusing anecdote produced the modern sense of a joke. "Gest" and "jest" are therefore doublets, two English forms of one French word. "Gestour" itself is now archaic and survives mainly in historical and literary writing.