Yeoman

A yeoman /ˈjoʊmən/ was a member of a social class in late medieval to early modern England. In early recorded uses, a yeoman was an attendant in a noble household; hence titles such as "Yeoman of the Chamber", "Yeoman of the Crown", "Yeoman Usher", "King's Yeoman", Yeomen Warders, Yeomen of the Guard. The later sense of yeoman as "a commoner who cultivates his own land" is recorded from the 15th century; in military context, yeoman was the rank of the third order of "fighting men", below knights and squires, but above knaves. A specialized meaning in naval terminology, "petty officer in charge of supplies", arose in the 1660s.

The term is first recorded c. 1300. Its etymology is unclear. It may be a contraction of Old English iunge man, meaning "young man" (compare , meaning "boy"), but there are alternative suggestions, such as derivations from an unattested *geaman (a hypothetical cognate of Old Frisian gaman, from gea- "province") meaning "villager; rustic". The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale appears in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400.

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