The Florence daily tribune. (Florence, Colo.) 1898-1903, 1898-10-01
THE WORD cHATELAtNe.
Something About the Derivation and Mean.
iugs OF the word.

ence Books" in st. Nicholas. Mr..
jerks says: Suppose little boy is
reading Il story and he comes to
the word chatelaine 1t may seem
to him an interesting bit of lam
guage, He thinks he would like TO
know what il means. Consequently
he shuts his book, keeping his fingor
III the place, and runs down stairs
TO where his father is busy in the
study preparing a speech upon tho
coming school election. Father"
he says, what is chatelaineq"
We will suppose that ms father il
a man who has sufficient informa-
tion to give n general answer to the
question.
"A chatelaine, ho may say, sis
the lady who is the presiding mis-
tress of castle,
The boy opens his book and reads
again the sentence in which he
found tho word. Then he giggles.
THAT can't be right" he says,
"for here it speaks of a lady who
hung chatelaine 10 her belt. Be-
sides, il says that the chatelaine
was made of hammered silver, so it
can't be a Lady who is mistress of
castle.
oh" his father replies, "that is
different There tho word means
little contrivance ladies wear at
4 their belts to hold chains from
which they suspend keys and tnb-
lets, pin boxes and such things.
"Then how did you come to make
such mistaken" the boy asks.
1t was not n mistake, his father
replies. The word means what
said too.
1t is queer that it should mean
two such different things. How
does it happeni" the boy asks.
Then the father-if he happens to
be the right kind of a father-puts
aside his work and says, Bring me
the dictionary.
The dictionary is brought ana
opened to the word, and father and
son devote few moments to the in
quiry how n single word can havo
two meanings apparently so diff
ferent, They find that chatelaino
comes from the French, and was at
| first spelled chastelaine, but that the
has disappeared, leaving only
little footprint in the shape Of an
accent over the a. Then it is dis
covered that chatelaine is really
form of tho word castelar,, short
| form of the Latin word castellanus,
meaning man who is the keeper
or owner of Il castellum, or castle.
And then the dictionary says ~.
castle, so they turn back TO castle.
They find that castle comes from
castel or chastel, which is the same
word in different form that now
appears as chateau, and that il
comes from the Latin castruIn,
meaning camp, while castrum
/ comes from casa, the Latin for hut,
a word still in the same form in
| Italian. "a curious instance of this
word is seen in the name of the boy
who stood upon the burning deck,
Casabianca, which is simply white
house'D. Casa is the Same word as
case or cover-that is, covering
! from the weather-and that comes
from the Sanskrit root chhad, which
means cover. Also from the
same root como cassock, chasuhle
and casino, which, it may sur
prise you to learn, are relatives of
1 the chatelaiue with which we start
ed. Now when we come to the
meaning of chatelaine we see that
it meant, at first, the mistress of
castle--that is, a keeper of the keys
to its supplies and stores-the house
4 keeper or housewife, aud that her
name was applied to the little bunch
of keys carried at her belt, just as
in English we speak of house,
wife, meaning little case or box
that contains needles, thread, scis-
sors, thimble, and so on. So now
we can see exactly how the same
WORD can mean a lady who is mis-
tress of castle and little CON
trivance for carrying at the belt
keys and other useful things.
After the boy has learned all these
things he turns to his father little
scornfully and says: "Humphl If
had known you were going to look
in the dictionary, l could have done
that myself. Then if his father
doesn't say, why didn't your" we
ourselves may add that little moral
/ to the fable.
Innocence