26 April 2021
While its meaning, tepid or moderately warm, is widely understood by English speakers, the origin of lukewarm is something of a mystery to present-day speakers. The second half of the compound, -warm poses no problem, but luke- is baffling. That’s because it is a lexical fossil, a root that pretty much survives only in this compound.
Luke comes down to us from the Old English root hleow, meaning shelter, often with connotations of warmth, and the verb hleowan meaning to provide warmth. We see it, in the form gehliuran, in a text purporting to be a letter from Alexander the Great to his old tutor, Aristotle. The letter is not genuine, but part of the Alexander legend, a mythos about the warrior that was quite popular in the medieval period. The letter appears in the Beowulf manuscript. The passage in question is in a section where Alexander purportedly relates what happened to him in India:
Ða cwom þær semninga swiðe micel wind ond gebræc, ond to þæs unheorlic se wind geweox þæt he þara ura getelda monige afylde, ond he ða eac usse feþer-fot-nietenu swiðe swencte. Ða het ic gesomnigan eft þa geteld ond seamas ealle tosomne, ond hie mon þa seamas ond þa þing ðara ura wic-stowa earfoðlice tosomne for þæm winde gesomnode. Ond ða on gehliuran dene ond on wearman we gewicodan.
(Then suddenly there came a great wind and crash, and the wind grew so fierce that it knocked down many of our tents, and greatly troubled our livestock [lit. four-footed-animals]. Then I ordered the tents be assembled again and the bags all brought together, and the bags and gear of our camp were gathered together with difficulty because of the wind. And then we camped in a milder and warmer valley.)
The Old English is a translation of an older Latin text, in which the crucial line reads:
in [a]pri[ci]ore ualle sedem castrorum inuenimus
(we reached a place of encampment in a sunny valley)
But by the early Middle English period, the connotation of warmth had become denotation. The poem Laȝamons Brut, a mythical history of Britain probably composed before 1200 (the manuscript is from c.1275) tells of the death of King Arthur’s knight Sir Bedivere:
Þene gare he uorð strahte;
mid stroge his maine.
and smat þene eorl Beduer;
forn a þan breoste.
þat þa burne to-barst sone;
biuoren and bihinde.
a opened wef his breoste;
þa blod com forð luke.
Þer feol Beduer anan;
deð uppen uolden.(Then he thrust forth the spear with his strong might and smote the earl Bedivere in the breast so that the byrnie burst open at once, before and behind. The blow opened his breast; the blood came forth luke. Bedivere fell there at once, dying upon the earth.)
We see the redundant compound lukewarm appear in the early fifteenth century, indicating that the standalone luke was falling out of use and no longer universally understood. The following is from another purported Alexander letter, known as the Secreta secretorum (Secrete of Secrets), this one from Aristotle imparting worldly wisdom to his pupil. It was translated from French, probably before 1425:
Bathes er on of þe merueylles of þys werld, ffor yt ys housyd after þe ffoure tymes of þe ȝeer, ffor cold accordes to wynter, leuk-warme to Veer, hoot to somer, drye to heruest. Greet wyt ys it to make ffoure dwellynges by ordre yn bathes, þe firste be cold, þe seconde leuk-warme, þe þrydde hoot, þe ferthe drye.
(Baths are one of the marvels of this word, for they are constructed after the four seasons of the year, for cold accords to winter, lukewarm to spring, hot to summer, dry to autumn. It is very wise to make four stages in order in the baths, the first is cold, the second lukewarm, the third hot, and the fourth a drying off.)
Aside from the occasional deliberately archaic usage, luke fell out of use by the end of the fifteenth century, leaving us only with the mysterious lukewarm.
Sources:
Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online, 2018, s.v. gehleow; hleowan, hlywan; hlywþ. hlewþ; hleow, hleo.
Fulk, R. D., ed. “The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle.” The Beowulf Manuscript. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010, 66–69.
Madden, Frederic, ed. Laȝamons Brut, vol. 3 of 3. London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1847, lines 27550–57. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. leuk, adj., leu(e adj.(1).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, December 2020, s.v. lukewarm, adj. and n., luke, adj., lew, adj.1 and n.2.
Steele, Robert, ed. Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, vol. 1. Early English Text Society, extra series 74. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898, 2.63, 82. The Internet Archive. London, Lambeth Palace Library 501.