10 August 2022
[11 August 2022: added comment about sennight]
A line from Ine’s law code from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 383 regarding the value of sheep
A fortnight is fourteen days, or two weeks. At first blush, the etymology may not be apparent, but a few moments’ thought should puzzle it out. Fortnight is a condensed form of fourteen nights. The word sennight, a blend of seven night, was also in common use in the medieval period, but has since faded from use, driven out by week, and now found only in deliberately archaic formulations.
It goes back to the Old English feorwertyne niht, as can be seen in this line from Ine’s law code. The code dates to c.694 but is only found in later manuscripts. This one is from the late eleventh or early twelfth century and relates the value of sheep:
Eowu bið hire geonge sceape scill weorð oðþ[æt] feorwertyne niht ofer eastron.
(A ewe with her lamb is worth a shilling, until fourteen nights after Easter.)
But in Old English, feorwertyne niht was distinctly written as two words. The blending would happen in the early Middle English period, as can be seen in the poem Layamon’s Brut, line 12815, found in British Library, Cotton MS Otho C.13, c. 1300. The line is in reference to news being brought to King Arthur about a fiend or monster who has kidnapped a maiden:
Nou his folle fourteniht þat he hire haueþ iholde.
(Now a full fortnight had he held her.)
The manuscript British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.ix, written about the same time and which contains a more complete version of the poem reads feowertene niht. So, it was about this point that the transition from the two-word phrase to the single blend occurred.
Fortnight is a good example of how, if one takes care in consulting a variety of sources, one can see language change underway.
Sources:
Ine § 55. In Felix Liebermann. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 of 3. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903, 114. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 383, fol. 28v.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. fourte-night, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. fortnight, n.; third edition, March 2021, s.v. sennight, n.
Image credit: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 383, fol. 28v. Stanford University, Parker Library on the Web. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.