Why did “entreat” mean “to hold talks about a matter”?
Please, can someone explain this Oxford English Dictionary etymology in simple layman terms? I have intellectual disabilities. I have difficulty reading between the lines.
What’s the common thread running through all these senses, starting from “treat”, then “treat (a person) in a specified manner”, then “hold talks about a matter”?
How did “treat” come to mean “treat (a person) in a specified manner”?
Then, where do the senses of “to negotiate” and “to hold talks about a matter” come from?
< Anglo-Norman entraiter, entreiter, entreter, Anglo-Norman and Middle French entraiter, Middle French entraictier to have a conversation with a person (13th cent. in Old French in an isolated attestation), to deal with (a matter) (late 13th cent. or earlier), in Anglo-Norman also to negotiate (a matter), to negotiate with (a person), to hold talks about a matter (all early 14th cent. or earlier), to treat (a person) in a specified manner (early 14th cent. or earlier)
< en- en- prefix1 + traiter treat v.
1 answer
What you list is a collection of attested meanings of specific French words on the British Isles at times when French was still the language used in many circles throughout England. The quoted text is not trying to weave them into any specific network showing how one meaning evolved from another within French; it just gives you a handful of data points with approximate timestamps, but the timestamps do not prove causality or even just "which meaning was there first".
Nearly all of the meanings fit into "discussing a specific matter with a specific person", except for one outlier. That outlier is labelled "an isolated attestation" which could perhaps suggest the possibility of a potential deviation for normal use of the word in that particular time and place (i.e., erroneous usage); or an archaism; or genuine, transient local usage which never caught on at scale. (Calling it "isolated" suggests to treat that one occurrence with extra caution and less attention.)
Why is this collection of meanings of a Middle French word called an "etymology"? It's only because they, in their totality, are supposed to explain the original or precursor meanings for the Modern English word "entreat".
To make sense of the entry, one needs to understand that "Anglo-Norman" does not refer to English, nor even to mediaeval English ("Middle English"), but to a Romance language similar to French that originated from Normandy but was spoken and written in England at the time of the spellings and meanings being discussed - alongside (Middle) English, (Middle) French, and Latin. All examples given thus predate the borrowing of the word into English.
A massive language shift from Anglo-Norman to English took place primarily during the 14th century. You can google up when the switch took place in schools, in courts (oral proceedings), etc. When people abandon a language, they usually bring many words they loved into their new language with them, often in a similar (sometimes narrower/more specialized) range of meanings.
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