Oil on canvas painting by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, c.1735
23 November 2022
Launder, laundry, and associated words come to us from the Old French lavandiere (feminine) and lavandier (masculine), which in turn come from the Latin lavandaria. These terms originally refer to people who wash clothes. These made their way into English in the thirteenth century in the form lavender. Launder is a later contraction of that form.
The present-day word for the plant used in perfume making is from the Medieval Latin lavandula. The relation of laundry to the present-day lavender is uncertain. It may be that the plant was named because of its use in washing clothes, making them smell better, or it may be coincidence, or the plant name may have originally been *livindula and morphed through folk etymology by association with washing.
Laundry is first recorded as a surname. We have a record of an Isabella la Lavendre, living in Oxfordshire, from the year 1227. It was usually women who did this work, but we do have records of men with that name as well. There is, for instance, a record of a Geoffrey le Lavander from 1261.
The use of lavender outside of names is in place by 1350, when it appears in the poem Heye Louerd, Thou Here My Bone, found in the manuscript London, British Library, Harley, MS 2253:
Whil mi lif wes luther ant lees,
Glotonie mi glemon wes;
With me he wonede a while.
Prude wes my plowe-fere;
Lecherie my lavendere;
With hem is Gabbe ant Gyle.
(When my life was deceitful and false, gluttony was my minstrel; he dwelled with me for a while. Pride was my playmate, lechery my laundress, with them are gossip and guile.)
The contraction appears shortly thereafter. The hagiography of Saint Brice in London, British Library, Harley MS 4196, copied sometime between 1375–1425, contains these lines:
A woman þat his lander was
In þat tyme had done trispas:
Flesly scho had her body filde,
And was deliuer of a knaue-childe.(A woman who was his laundress
In that time had sinned;
She had polluted her body carnally
And was delivered of a boy-child.)
The term money-laundering, that is using legitimate transactions to hide the origin of money from a criminal enterprise, doesn’t appear until much, much later. It becomes part of criminal jargon in the latter half of the twentieth century and makes its way into print by 1970. From an article about the mafia in Toronto’s Globe and Mail from 4 November 1970:
Ontario, Dr. Shulman said, as well as being a meeting place for Mafia members because they are not harassed by the police, is also favored as a place to invest money and to “launder” money.” [sic]
“Laundering,” Dr. Shulman said, is using unaccountable money from criminal activities for a legitimate transaction after which the money becomes usable.
And the term entered into the general lexicon as a result of the Watergate scandal. References to laundering the money used to finance President Nixon’s illegal campaign activities appeared many times in reporting on the scandal. Here is an early instance from the Evening Star and Washington Daily News of 12 January 1973:
Although the Justice Department charges do not detail where the $31,300 total came from or for what it was used, the prosecution’s statements in the Watergate trial have already tied the two $12,000 payments for Liddy to a Mexican money-laundering operation and Liddy’s surveillance assignments.
Sources:
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. launder, v.
Hardy, Thomas, D., ed. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londoninensi (Close Rolls in the Tower of London), vol. 2. London: George E. Eyre and Andrew Spottiswoode, 1844, 196. Google Books.
“Heye Louerd, Thou Here My Bone.” The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, vol. 2 of 3. Susanna Greer Fein, ed. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2014, lines 52–57. London, British Library, Harley, MS 2253.
Manthorpe, Jonathan. “Links Four Ontario Men to International Syndicate.” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 7 November 1970, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. lavender(e, n.1.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2002, s.v. money, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. launder, v., launder, n., lavender, n.1, lavender, n.2 and adj.
Polk, James R. “Nixon Campaign Panel Charged on Secret Use of Funds.” Evening Star and Washington Daily News (Washington, DC), 12 January 1973, C–Back Page. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“De sancto Bricio diacono sancti Martini.” Altenglische Legenden. Carl Horstmann, ed. Heilbronn: Henninger, 1881, 156, lines 71–74. HathiTrust Digital Library. London, British Library, Harley MS 4196.
“Writ to Walter de Burges.” Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. 1 of 5. London: Stationery Office, 1916, 92. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Image credit: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, c.1735, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.