Origin Of Knight

To be able to discuss and analyze the words properly, it is necessary to know their history. The temporal and spatial origin as well as the development of their meanings can deliver crucial information towards answering the research questions. Hence, this part is concerned with the etymology of knight and gentleman. Knight has three functions: it can be used as a verb (e.g. The Queen makes a knight of him.), a noun (e.g. The knights fought bravely in the battle.) and is also as family name. The noun derives from the Old English cniht, which was a "common West Germanic Word" (Harper 2001-2016: knight). While cniht originally meant "boy, youth, lad", it could also be used in a more specific sense to describe "a boy or lad employed as an attendant or servant"(OED). During the Middle English period, the term then increasingly …show more content…
This is also where the verb originated; "to dub or create (one) a knight," was and to a certain point still is the sovereign's process of giving a worthy person the honor of becoming a follower (OED). This first appeared in the early 13th century (Harper 2001-2016: knight). The amelioration knight meaning "boy" or "servant" to being a "warrior in the service of the king" (Campbell 2010: 262-266) resulted in an increase of the term's importance up to becoming a rank in nobility in the 16th century (Harper 2001-2016: knight). Today, there are mainly two meanings which we, as present-day users of the English language, associate with knight: first, the honorable "military servant or follower (of a king or some other specified superior) [...] [who is] devoted to the service of a lady as her attendant, or her champion in war or the tournament" (OED). This is the romantic medieval sense of the word which is documented in chivalric medieval epics like Chrétien de Troyes' Erec and Enide, which deal with topics such as honor,