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Corporate
Culture
Credit
where credit is due:
For the information on this page, we relied heavily upon
Webster's 1812 Dictonary and The American Heritage®
Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. ©
2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. and their excellent
online resource yourDictionary.com
© 2002 |
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mar•shal
v.
mar•shaled, also mar•shalled mar•shal•ing,
marshal•ling mar•shals, mar•shals
"to
order for effect, to organize for victory"
verb
transitive
• To arrange or place
(troops, for example) in line for a parade, maneuver,
or review.
• To arrange, place, or
set in methodical order
• To enlist and organize
• To guide ceremoniously; conduct or usher.
verb
intransitive
• To take up positions in or as if in a military formation
• To take form or order
Entymology
[ Middle English, from Old French mareschal, of Germanic
origin.]
The Germanic ‘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 the horse in medieval warfare. Along with many other Frankish
words, marahskalk was borrowed into Old French by about
800; some centuries later, when the Normans established a French-speaking
official class in England, the Old French word came with them.
In English, marshal is first recorded in 1218, as a surname (still
surviving in the spelling Marshall); its first appearance as a
common noun was in 1258, in the sense "high officer of the
royal court." The word was also applied to this high royal
official's deputies, who were officers of courts of law, and it
continued to designate various officials involved with courts
of law and law enforcement, including the horseback-riding marshals
we are familiar with in the United States.
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