Steorl

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A freeborn man of the lower rank in Anglo-Saxon England, holding land and owing duties to a lord
2. An Old English term for a free peasant who worked the land and ranked above the unfree classes
3. The status of a free commoner in early English society, a man of modest means who held his own land

Etymology: In Old English, "steorl" named a free man of the lowest rank, someone who owned a little land and owed service to a lord but was not a slave. Its standard West Saxon form was "ceorl," and the two words are the same word spelled in different regional dialects. The Anglian form that survives in "steorl" shows the sound change that produced many "sc"- and "st"- spellings in the north of England. The meaning later shifted downward. As the free peasantry lost standing after the Norman Conquest, the word came to mean a peasant, then a rude or ungracious man. Modern English "churl" descends directly from the same Germanic root, which also gave Old Norse "karl," the source of "carl" and, distantly, "churl" through separate channels.