A white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
18 November 2024
Deer can be traced back to the Old English word deor, but the word’s use in Old English was somewhat different than deer’s is today. In Old English, deor was a more general term, referring to any, usually but not necessarily undomesticated, four-legged animal, including fabulous beasts of legend. The word often carried a connotation of wildness and even ferocity, not something we today associate with Bambi. Deer is a cognate (i.e., sister word) of the modern German Tier, meaning animal.
We see this more general usage in a homily by Ælfric of Eynsham, written at the close of the tenth century:
Ne teah Crist him na to on ðisum life land ne welan, swa swa he be him sylfum cwæð, “Deor habbað hola, and fugelas habbað nest hwær hi restað, and ic næbbe hwider ic ahylde min heafod.”
(Christ did not gain land nor riches for himself in this life, just as he said about himself, “Deer have holes, and birds have nests where they rest, and I do not have anywhere I can lay down my head.”)
The meaning of deer narrowed in the Middle English period to the sense that we know today. The Normans had imported words like beast and animal into English from French, and there wasn’t a need for another word with the same meaning, so deer became more specialized, referring only to the family Cervidae, the meaning we have for the word today. We see this narrower use in Laȝamon’s Brut, a fictionalized verse history of Britain, probably written c. 1200, with a manuscript witness from c. 1275. This particular passage tells of the death of the evil King Menbriz:
Twenti ȝer he heold þis lond; þa leoden al to hærme.
& seoððen him a time com; mid teonen he wes i-funden.
þat he to wode wende. to wundre him-seoluan.
To huntien after deoren; werfore he deð þolede.
In þon wode he funde; feier ane hinde
þa hunten wenden æfter; mid muchelen heora lude.
Swa swiðe heo liððeden forð; þat þe king heom for-leas.
þat nefde he næfer enne; of alle his monnen.
He bi-com in a bæch; þer he bale funde.
vppen ane weorede; of wlfan awedde.
(Twenty years he held this land, and harmed the people,
But then a time came when he came to harm,
For he went into the woods, wandering by himself,
To hunt after deer, and thereby suffered death.
In those woods he found a fair hind,
The hunt had followed after, with their great clamor.
The king so rushed forth, that hey abandoned them,
That he had not a single one of all his men.
He came to a valley where he found death,
Among a pack of ravenous wolves.)
Sources:
Ælfric. “Quinquagesima (Sunday before Ash Wednesday).” In The Old English Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Roy M. Liuzza, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 86. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2024, 183–99 at 192–95.
Dictionary of Old English: A to Le, 2024, s.v. deor, n.
Laȝamon. Laȝamon’s Brut, lines 1291–1300. London, British Museum, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix. Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. der, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. deer, n.
Photo credit: Scott Bauer, US Department of Agriculture, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.