Marshals

Word History: The Germanic ancestor of Modern English marshal is a compound made up of *marhaz, "horse" (related to the source of our word mare), and *skalkaz, "servant," meaning as a whole literally "horse servant," hence "groom." The Frankish descendant of this Germanic word, *marahskalk, came to designate a high royal official and also a high military commander—not surprising given the importance of cavalry in medieval warfare. Along with many other Frankish words, *marahskalk was borrowed into Old French as mareschal in the early Middle Ages, when much of northern France was ruled by Frankish dynasties. Later, when the Normans established a French-speaking official class in England in the 11th century, the Old French term mareschal came with them. In the first known uses of the word in documents written in England, marshal was used with the meaning "farrier." (It was also recorded as a surname, and in the spelling Marshall, it still survives as such.) The word marshal eventually began to be used in a wider variety of meanings in Middle English, as it had been in Old French, and the term was applied in Middle English to high-ranking officers of the royal court and the courts of law.