Love Thy Neighbour

I was thinking about Christmas spirit and decided to look at the word neighbour. Surprisingly I discovered that its history is linked to boor. As you probably know, a boor is a rude and insensitive lout (not someone you'd want living next door). It derives from the Old English bur meaning 'dwelling place'.

By the time boor first appeared in English in the mid-16th century, its meaning had evolved from the place where someone lived to the person who lived there. So it was simply a rural person whose dwelling was in that part of the country. It's easy to imagine how the word for a rural citizen might begin to be used to mean someone without sophisticated manners.

Since neigh meant 'near', neighbour literally means the 'living space, or the person who lives, nearby'.

I was even more surprised to learn that the words guest and host both have the meaning 'enemy' in their roots. This was because a guest and a host would often be a stranger and, therefore, were to be welcomed only with caution! No wonder hospitality was considered such an admirable, generous quality…