harlot

15 December 2020

Harlot is a term of abuse, now rather old-fashioned, for a woman. It means prostitute, promiscuous woman, slut. But originally, the word referred to men. It comes from the Anglo-Norman harlot. The harl- root is of uncertain origin, but it is probably related to harlequin. The -ot is a no-longer-productive suffix forming a diminutive of a noun.

The earliest English sense of harlot is a vagabond or beggar. The earliest extant appearance is in the text known as Ancrene Riwle, a handbook for anchoresses, that is female hermits. It was written before 1200 C.E. and survives in a number of copies. A passage in a manuscript which was copied c. 1230 reads:

Scheome ich cleopie eauer her. beon itald unwurð. & beggin as an hearlot gef neod is here liueneð

(I call it shameful to be always judged contemptible and begging, as a harlot, if need be, for one’s sustenance.)

Over the next century or so, harlot also acquired the sense of a lecher or libertine. From the poem Of Arthour and of Merlin, probably written before 1300, and appearing in the Auchinleck manuscript, which was copied c. 1330:

Hir moder was ded acurssedliche
And hir fader starf reuliche
And hir broþer yslawe also
And hir soster quic doluen þo
Hir oþer soster hore strong
Þat al harlotes ȝede among.

(Her mother was damnably dead
And her father died pitiably
And her brother was also killed
And her sister was then buried alive
Her other sister a great whore
That all the harlots waxed poetic about.)

Also over time, the word became associated with entertainers, perhaps because such entertainers often solicited payment like present-day street performers do—or perhaps because of the harl- root the association was there all along; the medieval record is full of holes. The earliest version, the A-text of William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman, written c. 1376, uses harlot to mean minstrel or entertainer:

Holde wiþ none harlotis ne here nouȝt here talis,
And nameliche at mete suche men eschew[e],
For it arn þe deuelis disours I do þe to undirstonde.

(Associate with no harlots, nor hear their tales
And especially eschew such men at meals,
For they are the devil’s minstrels I want you to understand.)

And by the late fifteenth century, harlot could be used to refer to both male and female entertainers. The 1483 Catholicon anglicum, an English–Latin glossary contains this entry:

an Harlott; balatro (histrio A.) rusticus, gerro, mima (palpo A.) ioculator, -trix, pantomima, parasitaster, histrix, nugator, scurrulus

(a Harlot: fool (actor), peasant, buffoon, actor in pantomime (flatterer), jester, female jester, female jester, actress in pantomime, parasite, actress, storyteller, clown

The sense of a prostitute appears at about the same. From an anonymous translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, translated before 1425:

Wherefore the harlottes at Rome were callede nonariæ, for hit was not lawefulle to theyme to passe theire places, leste they schoulde lette yonge men from the commune vtilite.

(Why were the harlots of Rome called nuns? Because it was not lawful for them to leave their quarters, lest they should let the young men of the community make use of them.)

Harlots translates meretrices (prostitutes) in Higden’s Latin.

The male senses of harlot fall out of use by the seventeenth century, leaving only the sense of a prostitute or licentious woman.

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Sources:

Catholicon anglicum. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, ed. Early English Text Society, O.S. 75. London: N. Trübner and Co., 1881, 175. London, British Library, MS Additional 15562. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Langland, William. Piers Plowman: The A-Version, Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well. George Kane, ed. London: Athlone Press, 1960, lines 7.47–49, 318. Trinity College MS R.3.14. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Macrae-Gibson, O. D., ed. Of Arthour and of Merlin, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society, 268. London: Oxford UP, 1973, lines 787–92, 61. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. harlot, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2020, s.v. harlot, n.

Polychronican Ranulphi Higden monachi cestrensis, vol 1 of 9. Churchill Babington, ed. London: Longman et al., 1865, 249. London, British Library, Harley 2261. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Tolkien, J. R. R., ed. Ancrene Wisse: the English Text of the Ancrene Riwle. Early English Text Society, 249, 182. London: Oxford UP, 1962. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402. HathTrust Digital Archive.

titmouse

A tufted titmouse, Baeolophus bicolor, with blue-gray, orange, and white coloring, perched on a branch with snow on its beak

14 December 2020

A titmouse is a kind of small songbird of the family Paridae, with a variety of genera and species that range throughout the northern hemisphere and Sub-Saharan Africa. The name is of interest here because it is an excellent example of how superficial resemblances can lead one astray when trying to determine a word’s origins, for neither the bird nor the word have anything to do with teats or with mice.

The word first appears in the early fourteenth century in Le Traité de Walter de Bibbesworth sur la Langue Française (Walter of Bibbeworth’s Treatise on the French Language), which is not so much a treatise as it is a poem. The English words are interlinear glosses of the Anglo-Norman French:

                         titomoze
Uncore avez le musenge,
                       thoursekes
Ki les haies u boys renge,
                            ther gurdel
Delacez, valet, toust ta renge,
Si renger volez le musenge.

(Yet, you have the titmouse
That ranges among the hedges and woods,
Hastily untie your sword-belt, boy,
If you want to catch the titmouse.)

Titmouse is a compound of two roots. The origin of tit- here is likely an echoic coinage after the bird’s song or chirping. At about the same time that titomoze appears in Walter of Bibbesworth’s poem we see hints of the verb to tittle, meaning to whisper or spread gossip. I say hints because we don’t have attestation of verb itself until a bit later. But from 1275 we have a record of the surnames Richard le Titteler, Symon le Titteler, and Symon le Tuteler.

And we see tittler, meaning one who spreads gossip, in William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the B-text of which was written c. 1380:

Enuye herfore    hated conscience
And freres to philosofye    he fonde hem to scole
The while coveytise and vnkyndenesse    conscience assailled
In vnite holycherche    conscience helde hym
And made pees porter    to pynne þe ȝates
Of alle taletellers    and tyterers [a]n ydel
Ypocrisye and he    an hard saut þei made
Ypocrisey atte ȝate    hard gan fiȝte
And wounded wel wykkedly    many [a] wise techer
Þat with conscience acorded    and cardinale vertues

(Envy, therefore, hated Conscience
And brother to Philosophy he put him to scole
While Covetousness and Unkindness assailed Conscience
In solidarity Holy Church supported Conscience
And made Peace porter to fasten the gates
From all tale tellers and titterers in vain
Hypocrisy and they, they made a hard assault
Hypocrisy at the gate made a hard fight
And cruelly severely wounded many a wise teacher
Who agreed with Conscience and cardinal virtues.)

The verb to tittle is finally attested to in the play Mankind, which dates to 1465–70. The play features a demon named Titivillus whose mission to take down the names of those who whisper and gossip or mumble and mispronounce the Latin during mass. At one point in the play, Titivillus induces the title character Mankind to leave off his prayer and answer the call of nature by tittling in his ear:

I promise yow I have no lede on my helys.
I am here ageyn to make þis felow yrke.
Qwyst! pesse! I xall go to hys ere and tittle þerin.
A schorte preyer thyrlyth Hewyn: of þi preyere blyn.
Aryse and avent þe[e], nature commpellys!

(I promise you I have no lead in my heels.
I am here again to make this fellow weary.
Quiet! Hush! I shall go to his ear and tittle therein:
“A short prayer pierces Heaven: of your prayer, cease.
Arise and relieve yourself, nature calls!”)

An alternative explanation that is often offered is that tit here refers to something of small size. And tit has been used in English to mean a small horse or a small person, and the Icelandic tittur means a runt and tita the tip of a horn, but these are all later developments, sixteenth century or later.

It is also tempting to relate titmouse to the words petit or petite. If one goes by the modern spelling, these might seem to be good candidates, but etymology is about pronunciation, not spelling, and these suggestions are essentially phonologically impossible. To come from petit would require the dropping of the stressed syllable and the addition of a final /t/, neither one of which is likely, and to have both occur in the same word is almost unthinkable. Petite, with the shift in stress and the final /t/, dodges these objections, but this word is a modern borrowing from French, centuries after titmouse is recorded. Plus, there is nothing in record resembling petitmouse.

The second element of titmouse is older. It comes from the Old English masæ, the name for the bird. It appears three times in the Old English Corpus, all of them Old English–Latin glossaries, in which masæ glosses the Latin word for the bird, parula.

The Old English word comes from a common Germanic root that meant the songbird. Cognates in present-day languages are the German Meise, Danish mejsen, Dutch mees, Norwegian meis, Swedish mes, as well as the French mésange. The French word comes out of the Norman dialect, musenge (seen above). Norman French was heavily influenced by Old Norse because the region was heavily settled by Danes. Norman, after all, is just a variation on Norseman.

The shift of masæ or moze to mouse is a result of the Great Vowel Shift in the sixteenth century. In this case the vowel /u:/ changed to /aʊ/. And since it was pronounced the same as mouse, the spelling of titmouse soon followed.

So, a titmouse is a chirping songbird. It makes perfect sense once you know the history.

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Sources:

Burrow, John A. and Thorlac Turville–Petre. Piers Plowman: The B-Version Archetype. Raleigh, North Carolina: Seenet, 2018, lines 20.295–304, 371–72.

Hessels, J.H., ed. An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1890, 89. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Mankind.” Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Greg Walker, ed. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000, lines 556–61, 271.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. tit-mose, n., titiller, n.

Owen, Annie, ed. Le Traité de Walter de Bibbesworth sur la Langue Française (Walter of Bibbeworth’s Treatise on the French Language). Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977, lines 759–62, 114. HathiTrust Digital Archive. (Cambridge, University Library Gg.1.1).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, s.v. titmouse, n., tittler, n.1; January 2018, s.v. tit, n.4; December 2002, s.v. mose, n.

Pheifer, J.D., ed. Old English Glosses in the Épinal–Erfurt Glossary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, 43. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Reaney, P.H. and R.M. Wilson, eds. A Dictionary of British Surnames, second edition with corrections and additions. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976, 350. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Jocelyn Anderson, 17 December 2016, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

doctor

Illustration of Chaucer’s physician-pilgrim at the start of “The Physician’s Tale” from the Ellesmere Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales

13 December 2020

There are some who claim that those with PhDs are not “real” doctors, and that only physicians can properly lay claim to the title of doctor. And some PhDs who know Latin hit back by saying that doctor means teacher, and that they are the “true and original” doctors, while those with mere MD degrees are Johnny-come-lately wannabes. My own doctoral advisor was known to express the latter opinion. Both of these positions are wrong. When we’re speaking English, the title of doctor can rightly be applied to both.

In classical Latin, doctor does indeed mean teacher. The word is a nominal form of the verb docere, to teach. And in antiquity, this was the only meaning of the word. But this would change in the medieval era.

Writing in the sixth century, Gildas, in his De excidio et conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), uses doctor in the teacher sense, specifically to refer to teachers of theology:

Sed videamus quid Christi verus discipulus Magister Gentium Paulus, qui omni ecclesiastico doctori imitandus est, sicut et ego Christi, in tali negotio praeloquatur in prima Epistola dicens.

(But let us see what Paul, the true disciple of Christ, teacher of the Gentiles, who is emulated by every ecclesiastical doctor, just as I do of Christ, first says about so great a work, writing in his first epistle.)

Nearly seven hundred years later, we see physicians start to be accorded the title of doctor. Writing in the thirteenth century, the poet Michael of Cornwall (or at least we think it’s him) says:

O doctor Cincy,     medicorum qui quasi sol es,

(O doctor Cincy, who of medicine is just like the sun, you alone restrain

So, in medieval Latin, and in particular Anglo-Latin, doctor could refer both to a scholar and to physician. And when the word appears in English in the fourteenth century, we again see both meanings, which makes sense; English borrowed both meanings from Anglo-Latin.

In what may be the first known use of the word in English, Robert Manning of Brunne in his Handying Synne of 1303 uses the word to refer to teachers of theology:

Seynt Gregory telþ þarfore a tale
Pat telþ many one, what grete & smale.
He telþ mo hymself alone
Þan alle be doctours do echone.

(Saint Gregory tells therefore a tale, that many a one, both great and small, tell. He himself, alone, tells more, than every one of all the doctors.)

We see the English word doctor applied to physicians by the late fourteenth century. The “General Prologue” to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written c. 1387, uses it to describe the physician-pilgrim. The passage is also noteworthy in that it describes the physician’s education and practice, which includes astronomy, which would not be part of a modern MD’s ambit. It also distinguishes the physician from a theologian both by marking him as a doctour of phisik and by stating that he knows little about the Bible:

With us ther was a doctour of phisik;
In al this world ne was ther noon hym lik,
To speke of phisik and of surgerye,
For he was grounded in astronomye.
He kepte his pacient a ful greet deel
In houres by his magyk natureel.
Wel koude he fortunen the ascendent
Of his ymages for his pacient.
He knew the cause of everich maladye,
Were it of hoot, or coold, or moyste, or drye,
And where they engendred, and of what humour.
He was a verray, parfit praktisour:
The cause yknowe, and of his harm the roote,
Anon he yaf the sike man his boote.
[...]
His studie was but litel on the Bible.

(With us was a doctor of medicine;
In all this world there was no one like him,
To speak of medicine and surgery,
For he had been taught astronomy.
He cared for his patients very many times
In (astronomically suitable) hours using his natural magic.
He knew well how to calculate the position of the planet
In the sign of his patient.
He knew the cause of every malady,
Were it of hot, or cold, or moist, or dry elements,
And where they were engendered and by which bodily humor.
He was a truly perfect practitioner:
The cause and source of the harm known,
Straightaway he gave the sick man his remedy.
[...]
His study of the Bible was but a little.

At about the same time, an English translation of Lanfranco of Milan’s Chirugia magna (Science of Surgery) also uses doctor to refer to a physician, but in this case without marking it as a doctor of medicine (although the context makes that clear):

Þerfore I folowynge þe doctryne of rasis, auicen, & galion & of oþere doctouris, & also experimentis þat I haue longe preued, I seie þat it is nedeful þat a woundid man in þe bigynnynge absteyne him fro wiyn, & namely if þat þe wounde be in þe heed eiþir in ony partie of a senewe.

(Therefore following the doctrine of Rasis, Avicenna, Galen, and of other doctors, and also experiments that I have long tested, I say that it is needful that in the beginning a wounded man abstain from wine, particularly if the wound is either in the head or in any part of a nerve.)

And also from the late fourteenth century, John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum uses doctor to refer to a scholar of neither theology or medicine, specifically to Plato. But in the same passage, he also uses it to refer to Dionysius the Areopagite, a first-century, Christian bishop of Athens:

Plato of Athenes was doctour of alle þe prouynce of Attica þat was Grecia. Demoustenes with noble spekynge made þis cite haue a grete name duryng longe passyng of tyme, as Salustius seith. But passyng alle oþere Denyses doctour of þat cite, Paules disciple, makeþ mencioun of þis cite and maked it famous, for by his grete witte and wysedom he made fayre and hiȝeliche nyȝe alle þe parties of þe worlde, as Epiphanius seith in commendacioun of þe wyse doctour Athenes, and Ysyder seith pe same.

(Plato of Athens was the doctor of all the province of Attica, that was Greece. Demosthenes with noble speech gave this city a great name during the long passage of time, as Salustius tells us. But surpassing all others, Dionysius [the Areopagite], doctor of that city, Paul’s disciple, makes mention of this city and made it famous, for by his great wit and wisdom he made [it known] honorably and quickly to nearly all the parts of the world, as Epiphanius says in commendation of the wise doctor of Athens, and Isidore says the same.)

So, for over six hundred years, doctor has been in use as a label and title for both scholars and physicians, and in English use at least, neither one can lay claim to being the first or original meaning. Not that it matters, as meaning is determined by use, not etymology. The connotation of the word has shifted, however. Once, the unmarked doctor referred to a teacher, especially one of Christian theology; whereas now the unmarked word refers to a physician unless the context makes the type of doctor clear. This shift is undoubtedly due to the fact that during the course of their lives, most people will have more contact with physicians than with university professors.

Calls for only physicians to be labeled as doctors are also rather pernicious, in that they are usually directed at women or scholars of color. Female or BIPOC PhDs are more likely to be criticized for using the title, and are more likely to be called Ms. or Mrs. than white, male scholars are to be called Mr.

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Sources:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The General Prologue.” The Canterbury Tales. c. 1387, lines: 1.411–38. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. R. E. Latham, D. R. Howlett & R. K. Ashdowne, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. doctor. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Gildas. De excidio Britanniae. Joseph Stevenson, ed. London: Samuel Bentley, 1838, § 97, 104. Internet Archive.

Lanfranco of Milan. Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie.” Robert V. Fleischhacker, ed. Early English Text Society, O.S. 102. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1894, 1.3.10, 73. (Oxford, Bodleian Ashmole MS 1396. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879. s. v. doctor. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Mannyng, Robert. Handlyng Synne, Idelle Sullens, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 14. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghamton, 1983, lines 11,011–14, 274.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. doctour, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. doctor, n.

Russell, Josiah Cox and John Paul Heironimus. The Shorter Latin Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Relating to England. Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1935. 157. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum, vol. 2 of 3. M. C. Seymour, et al, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 15.8, 729. HathiTrust Digital Archive. (London, British Library, Additional MS 27944.)

Image credit: San Marino, Huntington Library, MS EL 26 C 9, f. 133r.

happy as a clam

A clam (Spisula solidissima) on a Cape Cod beach, emotional state undetermined

11 December 2020

To be happy as a clam is an Americanism meaning to be contented, comfortable, and not desiring more. It’s an odd phrase because we don’t generally consider clams to be sentient or capable of an emotion like happiness. But reading the early uses of the phrase makes the metaphor behind them clear.

The phrase dates to at least 1833 when it appears in James Hall’s novel Harpe’s Head; a Legend of Kentucky:

Having been in the habit of waiting on all occasions for Mrs. Lee to go foremost, it never occurred to him to be discontented, while she seemed satisfied. He was as happy as a clam. His horses thrived, and his corn yielded famously; and when his neighbors indignantly repeated their long catalogue of grievances, he quietly responded that King George had never done him any harm. But no sooner did that good lady take the patriot side, and incautiously drop a rebellious expression in his hears, than he began to examine the case with different eyes.

In December of that same year, it appears again in a racist joke told in the pages of Atkinson’s Casket. The joke is reprinted in any number of papers throughout the United States, and this joke may have been a major popularizer of the phrase:

A man being overtaken by a shower, sought shelter from the rain in the house of a negro fiddler. On entering, her found the negro in the only dry spot in the house—the chimney corner—as happy as a clam, fiddling most merrily.

On 23 January 1836, the phrase again appears in the Trenton, New Jersey Emporium and True American, only this time in expanded form that gives the reason that a clam would be happy. Again, the article is a humor piece that is reprinted in many papers. The Trenton paper credits the Boston Courier as having printed it first, but I cannot find that original use (if it is indeed the actual original and not itself a reprint):

I must leave off, for can’t say any more, only that if I was once more safe at home, I should be as happy as a clam at high water, as the sailors say.

Despite what this article says, there’s no reason to think the phrase is nautical in origin. Sailors would not, as a rule, have much to do with clams, which are generally found in the mud of the shallows, a place that sailors generally would not want to be.

Another use of the high-water extension appears in the anonymous novel The Clodpole Papers in 1844. Again, the use emphasizes contentment with one’s lot:

In this way he went on a few years, until he bought a small farm, got married to Patience Plodwell, the daughter of a forehanded old farmer in the down of Digwell, and settled down in life, as happy as a clam at high-water mark.

And few years earlier, The Knickerbocker of March 1838 had given an extended account of clams and the phrase:

Reader, have you a sympathy for clams? “Happy as a clam,” is an old adage. It is not without meaning. Your clam enjoys the true otium cum dignitate. Ensconced in his mail of proof—for defence purely, his disposition being no ways bellicose—he snugly nestleth in his mucid bed, revels in quiescent luxury, in the unctuous loam that surroundeth him, or, with slow and dignified motion, worketh nearer the surface, as the summer suns warm the roof of his mud-palace, or sinketh deeper within, from the nipping frosts of winter.

A philosopher, the world may wag as it will, what is it to your clam. His world is within. He is not active, but contemplative. A. Diogenes in his tub, he careth not for an Alexander, save that he would keep out of his sunshine. A recluse, he hath his own little cell, built for him by nature, from which he may shut out all the world, opening at times its cautious doors, merely to receive his simple nourishment. Yet is he not the hermit he would appear. Your true clam is gregarious. He liveth in communities; in a sort of reserved sociability with his neighbors. A bond of sympathy connecteth him, even through his shell-work walls, with all his species. Who can tell how many affections—passions, even—your clam may possess? It would be matter of curious speculation.

Otium cum dignitate means ease with dignity. It’s a quote from Cicero, who used it in a speech on behalf of his friend and fellow senator Publius Sestius:

Quid est igitur propositum his rei publicae gubernatoribus, quod intueri et quo cursum suum derigere debeant? Id quod est praestantissimum maximeque optabile omnibus sanis et bonis et beatis, cum dignitate otium.

(What then is the mark used by these helmsmen of the republic, that they should look to and steer their course? It is the most excellent and most desirable by all sensible and good and happy men, tranquility with dignity.)

For Cicero, both otium and dignitas had two meanings. Otium could mean a private life of ease, especially after having served the state, and it could also mean peace within the state. And dignitas could mean both personal honor, but also the honor and integrity of the state. Of course, Cicero was not considering clams when he was defending Sestius. Perhaps Rome would have avoided civil war and dictatorship if he had.

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Sources:

“A Good Reason.” Atkinson’s Casket, December 1833, 571. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Cicero. Pro Sestius. In Vatinium. Gardner, R., ed. Loeb Classical Library, LCL 309, Cicero 12. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958, 168, 302–04.

The Clodpole Papers. Baltimore: Parsons and Preston, 1844, 10. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Hall, James. Harpe’s Head; a Legend of Kentucky. Philadelphia: Key and Biddle, 1833, 46–47. HathTrust Digital Archive.

“The Humorist: The Oakwood Letters.” Emporium and True American (Trenton, New Jersey), 23 January 1836, 1. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

J.P.P. “Clams!” The Knickerbocker, 11.3, March 1838, 208. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. clam, n.2.

Photo credit: Ashley Delvento, 2018, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

handicap

10 December 2020

Handicap is a word without an obvious origin. It’s used in sports, notably horse racing and golf, and it is used to refer to a person’s physical or mental disability, although the use of the word in this context is no longer considered appropriate. The meaning in these contexts is clear, but why this particular combination of phonemes should come to mean these seemingly disparate things is not clear.

Handicap originally referred to a means of leveling an unequal competition or exchange. The method is, perhaps, best described in this passage from the 1751 Sporting Kalendar, which is also an early extant use of the term in reference to horse racing:

A Handy-Cap Match, is for A. B. and C. to put an equal Sum into a Hat., C. which is the Handy-Capper, makes a Match for A. and B. which when perused by them, they put the Hands into their Pockets and draw them out closed, then they open them together, and if both have Money in their Hands, the Match is confirmed; if neither have money it is no Match: In both Cases the Hand-Capper [sic] draws all the Money out of the Hat; but if one has Money in his Hand, and the other none, then it is no Match; and, he that has the Money in his Hand is intitled to the Deposit in the Hat.

If a Match is made without the Weight being mentioned, each Horse must carry ten Stone.

But the method is considerably older. An early form is described in William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman. From the C-text version of the poem, written c. 1390. This description doesn’t have the hands or the hat, but it does involve choosing an umpire to decide how to equalize an exchange of goods. The method acquired the name new fair, after the London market held on Soper’s Lane (present-day Queen Street, Cheapside) that developed a reputation for being a haunt of thieves and disreputable characters before being shut down in 1297. In Langland’s account, Clement the Cobbler wishes to exchange his cloak for Hicke the Ostler’s hood. The umpire deems the hood worth more, and Clement must buy Hick a cup of beer to make up the difference, and if any complain about the exchange being unfair, they must buy a round of drinks for those present:

Clement the coblere cast of his cloke,
And at the newe fayre nempnede hit to sull.
Hicke the hakenayman hit his hod aftur
And bade Bette the bocher ben on his syde.
There were chapmen ychose this chaffare to preyse,
That ho-so hadde the hood sholde nat haue the cloke
And that the bettere thyng, be arbitreres, bote sholde the worse.
Tho rysen vp in rape and rounned togyderes,
And preisede this penworths apart by hemsulue,
And there were othes an heep, for on sholde haue the worse.
They couthe nat by here consience acorden for treuthe
Til Robyn the ropere aryse they bisouhte
And nempned hym for a noumper, that no debat were.

Hicke the hostiler hadde the cloke
In couenaunt that Clement should the coppe fill
And haue Hickes hood the hostiler and holde hym yserued.
And ho-so repentede hym rathest sholde aryse aftur
And grete syre Glotoun with a galoun of ale.

(Clement the cobbler cast off his cloak,
And at the new fair offered it for sale.
Hicke the hackneyman offered his hood in exchange,
And asked Bette the butcher to be on his side.
There were merchants chosen to appraise these goods,
So that whoever had the hood should not also have the cloak
But that the better thing, according to the arbiters, that the lesser should be compensated.
Who rose up in haste and whispered together,
And themselves appraised it openly as a pennyworth.
And there were others in the crowd, for one was bound to come off the worse.
They, in truth, could not by their conscience agree
Until Robin the roper arose and they begged,
And named him the umpire, that there would be no dispute.

Hicke, the ostler, had the cloak
On the condition that Clement fill the cup
and have Hicke the ostler’s hood and hold himself well served.
And whoever regretted first should rise after
And greet Sir Glutton with a gallon of ale.)

The name handicap is applied to the game by 1653, when it appears in George Daniel’s Idyllia:

Ev'n those who now command, The inexorable Roman, were but what One step had given: Handy-Capps in Fate.

And Samuel Pepys makes mention of a game called handicap in his Diary of 19 September 1660, but it’s not clear if this refers to some version of the exchange game or a card game of that name:

Here we were very merry and had a very good dinner—my wife coming after me hither to us. Among other pleasures, some of us fell to Handycapp, a sport that I never knew before, which was very good. We stayed till it was very late and it rained sadly; but we made shift to get coaches and so home and to bed.

And in his 1666 The English Rogue Described, Richard Head details how the subject of his book uses the exchange game to evade the authorities:

I thought it high time to put my Plot in execution, in order thereunto I demanded what difference he would take between my Hat and his, his Cloak and mine, there being small matter of advantage in the exchange, we agreed to go to handicap. In fine, There was not any thing about us of waring cloaths but we interchanged, scarce had I un-cased my self, and put on my Friends cloaths, but in came one that had dogged me, attended by the Constable, with a Warrant to seize me, who they knew by no other token but my Boarding-Mistresses Sons garments, I had stolen for my escape. They forthwith laid hold on my Companion, (finding them on him) telling him, He should severely suffer for the wrong he did his Mistress, in the abuse of her house. Full of horror and amazement, he beseeched them not to carry him before his Mistress, knowing how much he had offended her, she would have no mercy on him; this confirmed their belief, that they had found out the Offender. The more he intreated, the more deaf and inexorable were they; and whilst they were busied about their mistaken Criminal-Prisoner, I took an occasion to give them the slip, knowing that a little further discourse would rectifie their Error.

And as we’ve seen, the idea of giving the lesser side an advantage was applied to horse racing in the eighteenth century, and the general idea of handicap as some form of hindrance or disadvantage is in place by the latter half of the nineteenth. From the British Medical Journal of 7 September 1872:

Other minor discrepancies need not be specially noticed in this place, but they have the effect of raising the mortality from zymotic disease in a single year from 60 to 77; an excess of 17, which, when dealing with numbers so small, is a serious handicap in the race for priority on the health-lists of England.

And some fifteen years later, handicap is used to refer to person’s physical disability. From the American Annals of the Deaf of October 1888:

For a good half of the time I am forced to other than oral communication from others in order to understand them—either gesture or writing. So that, after all these years, I am still at more or less disadvantage, for the handicap of deafness is a perpetual one.

By this time, handicap was completely divorced from the original idea of competitors signaling acceptance of a wager using hands and a cap. Because the origin is not apparent, some have speculated that the word comes from disabled people begging for money, that is from holding out their cap in their hand, an inventive, but incorrect, stab at the word’s origin.

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Sources:

Chamberlain, William Martin. “The Experience of a Lip-Reader.” American Annals of the Deaf, 33.4, October 1888, 273. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Head, Richard. The English Rogue Described (1666). London: Francis Kirkman, 1668, 148–49. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Langland, William. Piers Plowman (C Text, 2008). Derek Pearsall, ed. Liverpool: Liverpool U Press, 2014, 136–37, 6.376–93 (Passus 7 in some editions). San Marino, Huntington Library, MS 143.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2013, s.v. handicap, n., handicap, v.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 1 of 11. Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds. Berkeley: U of California P, 1970, 248. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Pond, John. The Sporting Kalendar. London: G. Woodfall, 1751, xxi–xxii. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Wilson, Edward T. “Sanitary Statistics of Cheltenham for the Years 1865–71 Inclusive.” British Medical Journal, no. 610, 7 September 1872, 270. JSTOR.