• esquire •
Pronunciation: es-kwair • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A male member of the English gentry ranking just below a knight. 2. (US) An honorific used mostly as an abbreviation, Esq., after the name of an attorney or consular officer, e.g. 'John Smith, Esq.' 3. (UK) A barrister at law.
Notes: We may refer to the status of an esquire as an esquiredom, an esquirehood, or an esquireship. Esquiress referred to a special female servant of a noble family until the 18th century and has recently been suggested as an honorific title for female lawyers. The original borrowing removed the initial e- to produce squire, which originally (early 13th century) meant "attendant to a knight"; later (15th century) the e- was restored.
In Play: Esquire has a historical side: "The term 'gentleman' historically was reserved for men of wealth who could not claim nobility or even the rank of 'esquire'." It also has a modern one: "The day he was notified that he had passed the bar exam, Mort Maine began signing his name 'Mortimer Maine, Esq.'"
Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from French escuier "shield-bearer, knight's groom", passed down from Medieval Latin scutarius "shield-bearer, guard" in Classical Latin "shield-maker". This word created from scutum "shield", which went on to become Anglo-Norman escuchon, whence English escutcheon. Scutum was the Latin rendition of PIE skoi-to- "board, split wood", which ended up in Russian as ščit "shield". Skoi-to- was a derivation based on skoi-/skei- "split, separate", which also went into the making of Sanskrit chinatti "to break, split up", Greek skhizein "to split, cleave", Latin scindere "to split", Breton skoed "shield, armor", Irish scoilt "to split", Scotts Gaelic sgoltadh "to split" and sgiath "shield", Lithuanian skilti "to split", Latvian skaldīt "to split", and English shin. (Now a word of gratitude to Wordmaster Tony Bowden of London, who shared his curiosity about the squire-esquire relation with us in the Agora.)
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