Origin and history of bairn

bairn(n.)

"child" (of either gender or any age), "son or daughter," Old English bearn "child, son, descendant," from Proto-Germanic *barnan (source also of Old Saxon barn, Old Frisian bern, Old High German barn "child;" lost in modern German and Dutch), from PIE root *bher- (1) "to carry," also "to bear children."

Originally a general English word, in modern English restricted to northern England and Scottish from c. 1700. This was the English form of the original Germanic word for "child" (compare child). Dutch, Old High German kind, German Kind are from a prehistoric *gen-to-m "born," from the same root as Latin gignere (see genus and compare kind (n.)). Middle English had bairn-team "brood of children."

Entries linking to bairn

child(n.)

Old English cild "fetus, infant, unborn or newly born person," from Proto-Germanic *kiltham (source also of Gothic kilþei "womb," inkilþo "pregnant;" Danish kuld "children of the same marriage;" Old Swedish kulder "litter;" Old English cildhama "womb," lit. "child-home"); it has no certain cognates outside Germanic. "App[arently] originally always used in relation to the mother as the 'fruit of the womb'" [Buck].

Also in late Old English, "a youth of gentle birth" (archaic, usually written childe). In 16c.-17c. especially "girl child." The wider sense "young person before the onset of puberty" developed in late Old English. The phrase with child "pregnant" (late 12c.) retains the original sense. The sense extension from "infant" to "child" also is found in French enfant, Latin infans. The meaning "one's own child; offspring of parents" is from late 12c. (the Old English word was bearn; see bairn). Figurative use from late 14c. Most Indo-European languages use the same word for "a child" and "one's child," though there are exceptions (such as Latin liberi/pueri).

The difficulty with the plural began in Old English, where the nominative plural was at first cild, identical with the singular, then c.975 a plural form cildru (genitive cildra) arose, probably for clarity's sake, only to be re-pluraled late 12c. as children, which is thus a double plural. Middle English plural cildre survives in Lancashire dialect childer and in Childermas.

Child abuse is attested by 1963; child-molester from 1950. Child care is from 1915. Child's play, figurative of something easy, is in Chaucer (late 14c.):

I warne yow wel, it is no childes pley To take a wyf withouten auysement. ["Merchant's Tale"]

genus(n.)

(Latin plural genera), 1550s as a term of logic, "kind or class of things" (biological sense dates from c. 1600), from Latin genus (genitive generis) "race, stock, kind; family, birth, descent, origin" (from suffixed form of PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups).