A
churl (etymologically the same name as
Charles / Carl and
Old High German karal), in its earliest
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) meaning, was simply "a man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile
peasant", still spelled
ceorl(e), and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary it later came to mean the opposite of the
nobility and
royalty, "a
common person". Says
Chadwick: This meaning held through the 15th century, but by then the word had taken on negative overtone, meaning "a country person" and then "a low fellow". By the 19th century, a new and
pejorative meaning arose, "one inclined to uncivil or loutish behaviour" (cf. the pejorative sense of the term
boor, whose original meaning of "country person" or "farmer" is preserved in Dutch and Afrikaans
boer and German
Bauer, although the latter has its own pejorative connotations such as those prompting its use as the name for the chess piece known in English as a
pawn. Also the word
villain - derived from
Anglo-French and
Old French and originally meaning "farmhand" - had gone through a similar process to reach at its present meaning).