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Author: modusa
Surnames: Cameron, Winters
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.cameron/1776/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
From World Wide Words -- 08 Sep 07 (reposted with permission; thanks, Michael!)
3. Recently noted
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YO, WOMAN! For the first time in its 522 years, a woman began work
on Monday as a member of the Yeomen of the Guard who act as warders
at the Tower of London. Because one condition for joining the Guard
is a continuous period of 20 years in the armed forces, reaching at
least the rank of staff sergeant, it is only recently that women have
become eligible to join the warders' ranks. Most papers that reported
the event jokingly called the new member, Moira CAMERON, a yeowoman,
no doubt believing they had invented it. But it turns out to have a
long history - the OED's first example is from 1852. It became more
widely known during the First World War when women began to serve in
the US Navy. They had the official rank of Yeoman (F), "F" denoting
female, as you would guess. An informal term was "yeomanette", which
the women hated; "yeowoman" was a common alternative. The last member
of the group, Charlotte WINTERS, died only last March at the age of
109. Both "yeomanette" and "yeowoman" vanished after the War except
in reference to this period. Among other meanings, yeoman was the
name given to a superior servant in a noble or royal household, one
who often ate meat (in Old English, humbler servants were called
loaf-eaters, who mainly subsisted on bread). Such well-fed menials
were derisively named "beef-eaters" and this is the source of the
famous nickname of the members of the Yeoman of the Guard, who
acquired it in the seventeenth century. These days they carry it with
pride.
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. All rights
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http://www.worldwidewords.org/ .
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