3 July 2020
Chairman is a traditional title for the leader of a committee or other such body. The origin is, as one might guess, a compound of the words chair + man. The chair is a reference to a seat or position of authority and the man is, of course, a reference to the person who occupies it. But chairman, because it connotes that the occupier is male, is a sexist term, and the root chair is often used on its own refer to the person as well as the abstract seat of authority. But this latter usage is not a new change, having been in use for centuries, for as long as chairman itself.
Chair is a borrowing from Anglo-Norman French chaëre, which in turn comes from the Latin cathedra, which in turn is from the Greek καθέδρα (kathedra). The second element of the compound, man, is from the Old English mann.
Chair, simply denoting a seat for one person, is found in English sometime before 1300. One of the earliest appearances is from the poem Sir Tristrem, found in the Auchinleck Manuscript, (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1), lines 309–10:
A cheker he fond bi a cheire,
He asked who wold play.
The sense of chair meaning a literal throne or seat of authority also dates to the late thirteenth century and the romance King Horn, lines 1273–76:
Horn sat on chaere
& bad hem alle ihere.
“King,” he sede, “þu luste
A tale mid þe beste.”
(Horn sat in the chair
& bade them all to hear.
“King,” he said, “you listen to
a tale with the best.”
“Life of St. Edmund Rich,” found in the South English Legendary, lines 265–68:
A dai as þis holi man: in diuinite
Desputede, as hit was his wone: of þe trinite,
In his chaire he sat longe: er his scolers come;
Alutel he bigan to swoudri: as a slep him nome.
(One day as this holy man, in divinity, disputed, as was his wont, about the Trinity, in his chair he had sat long, before these scholars came; soon he began to drowse, as he had taken no sleep.)
The use of chair to refer to the presiding officer of a committee or other such body dates to the mid seventeenth century. From the Diary of Thomas Burton for 24 March 1658/9:
The Chair behaves himself like a Busby amongst so many school-boys, as some say; and takes a little too much on him, but grandly.
(Richard Busby was the chief master of the Westminster School from 1640–95. He was famous for his “magisterial severity.”)
The compound chairman is recorded a few years earlier than this use of chair. From an anonymous pamphlet, “Concerning a Treaty: To Reconcile the Differences, and Vnite the Spirits of Godly Ministers,” published sometime between 1640–49.
That in the peculiar meetings no constant and perpetuall Chairman shall be appointed, but that every one shall preside therein as it falleth out to be his turn according to the order wherein his name shall be found in the List of subscriptions unto the first declaration for a Treaty.
Although we have record of chairman existing a decade or so before this particular sense of chair, the dates are close enough, and the surviving documents from the period scanty enough, that we can consider both of them to have arisen about the same time. This use of chair to refer to a presiding official is not a politically correct neologism.
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