The Etymology of Homage
Homage names a precise feudal ritual, even though most modern speakers use it loosely. In the medieval ceremony, a vassal would kneel before his lord, place his joined hands between the lord’s, and declare devenio vester homo — I become your man. The Old French word homage, formed on homme (man, from Latin homo), captures exactly that: the act of becoming the lord’s man. A vassal who had performed homage owed military service, counsel, and loyalty in exchange for the use of land. English borrowed the word with the institution itself in the 13th century, and it remained a precise legal term throughout the medieval period. As feudalism faded, homage drifted into figurative use: by the 18th century one could pay homage to a king, a memory, a teacher, an artist, an idea — any act of formal respect. In modern art-history and film criticism, an homage is a respectful reference to a predecessor — Tarantino’s homage to Sergio Leone, for instance. Latin homo descends from Proto-Indo-European *dhghem-, earth, and is the same root that gives English humble — both root the human in the soil.