Porridge — From Middle English to English | etymologist.ai
porridge
/ˈpɒrɪdʒ/·noun·c. 1532, in Early Modern English as 'poridge' or 'porridge', denoting a thick boiled grain dish·Established
Origin
Porridge is a 16th-century phonological corruption of pottage (from Old French potage, 'that which is put in a pot'), reshaped by contact with porray, a leek broth, narrowing from a broad medieval stew term to the oat-specific breakfast staple — and later British slang for a prison sentence.
Definition
A thick, soft food made by boiling oats or another grain in water or milk, typically eaten as a breakfast dish.
The Full Story
Middle English14th–16th centurywell-attested
'Porridge' is a reformed variant of 'pottage', the thick boileddish that was the staple food of medieval Europe. The earliest form in English is 'pottage' (from Old French 'potage', meaning 'that which is put in a pot'), recorded from around 1300. The shift to 'porridge' appears by the 16th century (c. 1532), with an intrusive 'r' influenced by contact
Did you know?
The Scottish traditionholds that porridge should be eaten standing up and referred to without an article — simply 'porridge,' never 'a porridge.' More surprising is that the familiar word is essentially a mispronunciation: Englishspeakers in the 1500s slurred 'pottage' under the influence of 'porray' (a leek broth), and the error stuck so completely that the original form 'pottage' is now the obscure one, surviving mainly in the biblical phrase 'mess of pottage.'
*porso- (plant stalk), which also gave Greek 'prason' (leek). The word narrowed dramatically: medieval 'pottage' covered any thick boiled soup or stew, but by the 17th–18th centuries 'porridge' referred specifically to boiled oatmeal, reflecting the dominance of oat cultivation in Scotland and northern England. British slang 'doing porridge' (serving a prison sentence) dates from the 19th century, from the association of thin gruel with prison fare. Key roots: *porso- (Proto-Indo-European: "plant stalk, leek — source of Latin porrum and the porray contamination"), potage (Old French: "food prepared in a pot; thick soup — the original form before phonological reshaping"), porrum (Latin: "leek — whose phonology contaminated pottage into porridge").