Genealogy is the study of family. It also involves learning how to research well. One of the more fun aspects of genealogy involves the discovery of the meanings of words, terms, and phrases that you did not know before you started doing your research. There is always something new to learn and discover!
It is a good idea to have access to more than one genealogy dictionary. Not every mysterious word that you come across is going to be found in every dictionary. Some of these glossaries are quite small, and somewhat limited in their scope.
In a previous blog, I talked about a few interesting genealogy related words that I found in the Genealogy Glossary on the Family Tree Magazine website. This time, I decided to play around with the ROOTS Genealogical Dictionary from rootsweb. Each of these genealogy dictionaries is online, and free for everyone to use.
Last time, I came across the word “vivandiere”. Family Tree Magazine defines this word as “A woman who followed a military regiment as a sutler or canteen keeper”. Since then, I’d been wondering what on earth a “sutler” was.
ROOTS Genealogical Dictionary has a word that is spelled slightly different than “sutler” The word “suttler” is defined as “A peddler of various sundries to an army in the field, used during the Civil War”. Now I know!
There were many interesting phrases to be found in this dictionary. “Sake and Soke” means “a right of jurisdiction claimed by a lord of a manor”. “Scot and Lot” is defined as “The rights and duties of a citizen”. A “Man-At-Arms” was “A soldier holding his land, usually 60 -120 acres, in return for military service.” The definition goes on to say that “yeoman” is another word for “Man-At-Arms”.
Sometimes, looking up the genealogy related words that you don’t know leads you on a scavenger hunt, of sorts. What does “manwryth” mean? The definition simply reads “see leodgeld”. Ok, great. So, what’s a “leodgeld”? It turns out that a “leodgeld” is “A fine paid for killing a man.”
Did you know that the word “liblac”, and the word “lyblac” both mean “witchcraft”? The word “terce” is defined as “A widow’s right, where she has no conventional provision, to a life rent of a third of her husband’s heritable property”. This is not to be confused with the word “terse”, which means “Part of the monastic timetable for liturgy, called horarium.” What on earth does “horarium” mean? It is simply another word for “The monastic timetable”.
Image by Horia Varlan on Flickr