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Origin and history of sir

sir

title of honor of a knight or baronet (until 17c. also a title of priests), c. 1300, a variant of sire (q.v.) that was used originally only in unstressed position. It is not an acronym of anything.

It was generalized as a respectful form of address by mid-14c., and eventually extended to all equals or used without regard for rank. It has been used as a salutation at the beginning of letters from early 15c. As a noun, "person of rank or importance," from 14c.

also from 17c.

Entries linking to sir

sire(n.)

c. 1200, a title placed before a name and denoting knighthood, from Old French sire "lord (appellation), sire, my lord," from Vulgar Latin *seior, from Latin senior "older, elder" (from PIE root *sen- "old"). Later sir (q.v.), an alteration of sire, was used for this.

Wulcume sire Arður, wilcume lauerd.

[Laʒamon's "Brut," c. 1200]

Standing alone and meaning "your majesty" it is attested from early 13c. The general sense of "important elderly man" is from mid-14c.; that of "father, male parent, forefather" (as in grandsire) is from mid-13c., paired with dame. From 1520s as "male parent of a quadruped animal," especially a domestic animal, with dam (n.2) for the female parent.

sirloin(n.)

early 15c., surloine, shurleyne, surloyne, a cut of beef, from 16c. identified specifically as the upper part of the loin, from French surlonge, literally "upper part of the loin," from sur "over, above" (see sur-) + longe "loin," from Old French loigne (see loin).

The English spelling with sir- dates from 1620s. It is possible that this shift was influenced by sir; surname in 16c.-17c. often was spelled sirname. There is no evidence for the folk-etymology tale that the cut of beef was "knighted" by an English king for its superiority, a tale variously told of Henry VIII, James I, and Charles II. The story dates to 1655 (Fuller, "Church-History of Britain," who writes parenthetically that it was "so knighted, saith tradition, by this King Henry," meaning Henry VIII).

The word surloin or sirloin is often said to be derived from the fact that the loin was knighted as Sir Loin by Charles II, or (according to [early 19c. English dictionary writer Charles] Richardson) by James I. Chronology makes short work of this statement; the word being in use long before James I was born. It is one of those unscrupulous inventions with which English 'etymology' abounds, and which many people admire because they are 'so clever.' The number of those who literally prefer a story about a word to a more prosaic account of it, is only too large. [Walter W. Skeat, "An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language," 1882]