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Origin and history of bride

bride(n.)

"woman newly married or about to be," Old English bryd "bride, betrothed or newly married woman," from Proto-Germanic *bruthiz "woman being married" (source also of Old Frisian breid, Dutch bruid, Old High German brut, German Braut "bride"), a word of uncertain origin.

Gothic cognate bruþs, however, meant "daughter-in-law," and the form of the word borrowed from Old High German into Medieval Latin (bruta) and Old French (bruy) had only this sense. In ancient Indo-European custom, the married woman went to live with her husband's family, thus the sole "newly wed female" in such a household would have been the daughter-in-law. On the same notion, some trace the word itself to the PIE verbal root *bhreu-, which forms words for cooking and brewing, as this likely was the daughter-in-law's job. An Old Frisian word for "bride" was fletieve, literally "house-gift."

Entries linking to bride

bird(n.2)

"maiden, young girl; woman of noble birth, damsel, lady, lady in waiting," also "the Virgin Mary," c. 1200, perhaps a variant of birth (n.) "birth, lineage," confused with burd and bride (q.q.v.), but felt by later writers as a figurative use of bird (n.1), which originally meant "young bird" and sometimes in Middle English was extended to the young of other animals and humans.

In later Middle English and after, bird (n.2) largely was confined to alliterative poetry and to alliterative phrases. The modern slang meaning "young woman" is from 1915, and probably arose independently of the older word (compare slang use of chick).

bridal(adj.)

"belonging to a bride or a wedding," c. 1200, transferred use of the noun bridal "wedding feast," from Old English brydealo "marriage feast," from bryd ealu, literally "bride ale" (see bride + ale). The second element later was confused with suffix -al (1), especially after c. 1600.

Compare scot-ale under scot (n.), provincial lamb-ale "a country feast at lamb-shearing," and Middle English scythe-ale (mid-13c.) "drinking celebration for mowers, as compensation for a particular job." Fitzedward Hall ("Modern English," 1873) noted it as a curious etymology for "a word now suggestive of no beverage less luculent than champagne or sparkling moselle." Bridal-suite is attested by 1857.