Words: Cheapside, Chepstow and all sorts of chaps…

A gold pendant reliquary from the 17th century Cheapside Hoard to be shown at the Museum of London this autumn. Photograph: Museum of London

I was already musing on words beginning with chap and cheap before, by chance, an exhibition featuring the 17th century Cheapside Hoard was announced. Read about the treasures here.

Cheapside is in the City of London and was the site of a Medieval produce market. At that time it was known as Westcheap, to distinguish it from Eastcheap, near London Bridge. The word “cheap” broadly means “market”.

You also find the word in the name of my old home town of Chepstow, an old market town with a Norman castle, on the Welsh/English border where the River Wye comes down to meet the Severn estuary.

The name Chepstow derives from the Old English ceap / chepe stowe, meaning market place or trading centre. The word “stow” usually suggests a place of special significance. I hadn’t realised the root “chep” in Chepstow and Cheapside also appears in Chipping Sodbury – I always thought the “Chipping” name was to do with ancient flint knapping (that link goes to James Dilley’s excellent flint-knapping site)!

I spent many happy hours in this old bookshop at the bottom of Chepstow’s steep High Street during my school days…

So, apart from place names, we have many English words relating to chap/cheap, coming from various different root languages. Most of the following information comes from my favourite Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary from the 1970s…

Our modern word “cheap”, meaning a bargain, comes from the Old English ceap, price, ceapain, a bargain. Related are the Old Norse kaupa and German kaufen, to buy.

That leads on to “chap”, meaning a fellow or bloke. Originally a chap was the customer of a “chapman”. This was an itinerant trader/dealer/pedlar. The word again comes from the Old English root ceap, here interpreted as trade, leading to ceapman, a trader. Compare this with the German kauf and kaufmann and Dutch koopman.

Illustration showing a typical ‘chapman’, from Thomas Berwick’s A History of British Birds

Then of course there were “chapbooks” – pocket-sized books or pamphlets hawked by a chapman. There’s a good collection at the V&A Museum in London.

Woodcut illustration of fairies dancing in a ring from a 17th century chapbook…

Then there is “chap” meaning a cheek or jaw – you may be more familiar with “chops” in this context. The dictionary says that in Northern English and Scots the word is chaft from the Old Norse kjaptr, meaning jaw. I know this word from Bath chaps! A Bath chap is the flesh from a pig’s head, removed from the skull and wrapped around the tongue. These are very tasty but more lardy than la-di-da!

A Bath chap – click on the image to see how they are made, as described on the Buttonsoup website…

In the winter your “chaps” (cheeks) may be “chapped” (cracked) by cold weather. This word “chap”, meaning to crack or knock, comes from the Middle English chappen, related to the Dutch and German kappen.

“Chaps” are also a cowboy’s protective leather riding leggings. This is short for chaparajos or chaparejos, a Mexican Spanish word.

Lovely chaps, ladies! The Heartland Riders rodeo drill team wearing fancy chaps from Arrowhead Cowboy Supply…

In the same neck of the woods you will find “chaparral” – dense tangled brushwood, from the Spanish chaparro, the evergreen oak, one of its constituent shrubs.

Ceanothus oliganthus or California lilac growing in chaparral in Santa Monica – click on the image to go to the source on Wikimedia Commons…

Then there are the English words coming from the Latin capa or cappa, meaning a cloak. This leads to many things, including the obvious “cape” or “cope”. Also “cap”, meaning something that goes on top of something else, including your head.

A reproduction bronze scabbard chape from the Viking Jewellry website…

A “chape” is a plate of metal at the tip of a sword scabbard. In Old French chape meant head-dress or large hood, chapelet was a little head-dress and from this we took “chaplet”, meaning a garland or wreath for the head, or a circlet of gold; or a short string of beads used in counting prayers – one-third of a rosary.

An elven floral chaplet from DaWanda – click on the image to go the website…

A “chapel” is an lesser place of worship, such as a non-conformist church in England and Wales, or a Roman Catholic or Episcopalian church in Scotland. It can also be an attached place of worship alongside or within a church or in a castle, stately home or college. This comes from the Old French capele, from the Latin cappella, meaning a little cloak, from the aforementioned cappa, a cloak.

This next bit is all new to me, but apparently all this cloak-becoming-a-chapel stuff relates to the legend of St Martin of Tours. He was a Roman soldier but later became Bishop of Tours. There’s a legend that when he was a soldier he cut up his cloak and gave half to a beggar. Then he had a dream about Jesus and became a holy man. The other half of the cloak became a holy relic carried into battle by the Merovingian kings of the Franks in the Middle Ages.

St Martin cuts his cloak to share with the beggar in this 15th century Hungarian painting by an unknown artist. Here Martin doesn’t look like a Roman soldier – and the horse doesn’t look like a horse! But I like it…

I also hadn’t realised that the famous London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields is dedicated to this St Martin of Tours.

The priest who cared for the reliquary was called a cappellanus. Eventually all priests who served the military were called cappellani. In French that became chapelain and in English “chaplain”. Chaplains now provides spiritual and pastoral support for the military and for organisations, companies and even aristocratic families.

People called any small temporary church built for the relic a capella, the word for a little cloak. The cloak association was lost with the passage of time and now all small churches are called “chapels”.

This image of the St Ivan Rilski Eastern Orthodox chapel in Antarctica reflects for me the idea of a chapel as a church outpost. Read more about it by clicking on the image…

More directly from French we get “chapeau”, for a hat, and “chapeau-bras” for a three-cornered hat that could be folded flat to be carried under the arm. It was fashionable in Europe in the early 19th century.

Then there is “chaperon/e” – a kind of hood or cap or a young woman’s older companion there for the sake of protection, restraint or appearance’s sake.

A “chapter” is a main division of a book, or anything; an assembly of canons of a cathedral or collegiate church or members of a religious or military order – from their custom of reading a chapter of the rules or of the Bible. As chapters have headings, it’s not surprising that the word comes from Old French chapitre, from Latin capitulum, from caput, the head.

Almost there, chaps!

From the Hindu capati we get “chapati” or “chapatti” or “chaphati” – a thin cake of unleavened bread we enjoy with our Indian takeaway meals.

A pilgrim girl baking chapatis in an Indian temple – picture by Claude Renault…

Also from Hindu is a now-obscure word from my Chambers Dictionary – “chaprassi”, meaning an office messenger or household attendant or orderly. The Hindu is chaprasi, a badge-wearer or messenger, from chapras, meaning a badge.

All done. Hope you enjoyed the ride…