Etymology Dictionary

BADGER,  the name of an animal.  (F.,—L.)   Spelt bageard in Sir T. More, Works, p. 1183 g; but the final d is there excrescent.   α. In M. E., the animal had three familiar names, viz. the brock, the gray, and the bawson, but does not seem to have been generally called the badger.   β. The name is a sort of nickname, the true sense of M. E. badger or bager being a 'dealer in corn;' and it was, presumably, jocularly transferred to the animal because it either fed, or was supposed to feed, upon corn.   This fanciful origin is verified by the fact that the animal was similarly named blaireau in French, from the F. blé, corn; see blaireau in Brachet.   γ. The M. E. badger stands for bladger, the l having been dropped for convenience of pronunciation, as in baberlipped (P. Plowman, B. v. 190) compared with blabyrlyppyd (Digby Mysteries, p. 107).—O. F. bladier, explained by Cotgrave as 'a merchant, or ingrosser of corn.'—Low Lat. bladarius, a seller of corn.—Low Lat. bladum, corn; a contraction of abladum, abladium, used to denote 'corn that has been carried,' 'corn gathered in;' these words being corruptions of Lat. ablatum, which was likewise used, at a late period, to denote 'carried corn.'—Lat. ablatum, neut. of ablatus, carried away.—Lat. ab; and latus, borne, carried; a corruption of an older form tlatus, pp. of an old verb tlao, I lift.—✔TAL, to lift; Fick, i. 601. [†]

ADDENDA

Subst.   Mr. Nicol's note upon this word is as follows.   'This word, which originally meant "corndealer," is generally derived from the now obsolete F. bladier, with the same sense.   Mätzner and E. Müller remark that this derivation offers serious phonetic difficulties; in fact, not only is there the loss of l, which is not unexampled, but there is the consonantification of the i of the O.F. diphthong ié to dzh, a change of which no instance is known, though O.F. words with ié are very common in English.   An even more serious difficulty, already pointed out in the Romania (1879, v. 8, p. 436)—I presume by Prof. G. Paris, not by Mr. Wedgwood—is that bladier, like many other words in Cotgrave, is a Provençal form, and consequently could not have got into Mid. Engl.; the real French word is blaier (Cotgr. blayer), of which Mod. F. blaireau, "badger" (the animal), is a diminutive.   Now blaier would have given Mid. E. blayeer, Mod. E. blair, just as chaiere gave chayere, chair; whether blayeer, blair has anything to do with the Scotch name Blair, I do not know, but it clearly is not badger.   Assuming the loss of l, badger can hardly be anything but a derivative of Old F. blaage, which means both "store of corn" and "tax on corn."   I do not find an Old F. blaagier recorded, but it probably existed, especially as there is, I think, no trace of the simple substantive (which would have been blage) in Engl.; the word, transliterated (or rather trans-sonated) into Latin, would be ablātāticārium.   It is very possible that examples of an Old F. word blaagier, and of a Mid. E. form blageer, may yet be found; in any case the ordinary derivation from Prov. bladier (= Lat. ablātārium) is historically and phonetically impossible.'—H. Nicol.   Mr. Wedgwood points out that there is actual evidence for a belief that the badger does lay up a store of corn.   Herrick (ed. Hazlitt, p. 468) calls him the 'gray farmer,' alluding to his store of corn.

                                           'Some thin
Chipping the mice filcht from the bin
Of the gray farmer.'     King Oberon's Palace.