auberge
May. 22nd, 2025 06:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordauberge (oh-BAIRZH; French oh-BERZH) - n., an inn or hostel.
Or sometimes a restaurant, because some inns also serve food, but more strictly it's a place to sleep for the night. Dictionaries wildly disagree on when this was taken on from French, ranging from the 15th to 18th centuries, which highlights that dictionary compilers have very different databases. The French word is taken from Provençal, with alberga/alberja attested from the eleventh century, which okay would technically be in Old Provençal, at which point it also meant an encampment/hut as well as inn, from a Germanic root (compare Old Saxon heriberga, army shelter, and Old High German heriberga, army headquarters) that also gave us harbor.
---L.
Or sometimes a restaurant, because some inns also serve food, but more strictly it's a place to sleep for the night. Dictionaries wildly disagree on when this was taken on from French, ranging from the 15th to 18th centuries, which highlights that dictionary compilers have very different databases. The French word is taken from Provençal, with alberga/alberja attested from the eleventh century, which okay would technically be in Old Provençal, at which point it also meant an encampment/hut as well as inn, from a Germanic root (compare Old Saxon heriberga, army shelter, and Old High German heriberga, army headquarters) that also gave us harbor.
---L.
