Bargain is  a word that demonstrates how etymologies can get lost in the fog of history; and how I can happily bumble around in the same fog and find some fun things.

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The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that ever since it appeared in English in 1330 bargain has meant just about what it means now, “discussion,” “agreement,” “negotiation.”

The OED has as its etymology for bargain that English got it from Old French and ultimately Latin.

But now comes the foggy part.

The OED etymology calls up the opinions of  the German philologist Friedrich Diez who died in 1876. Diez seemed to feel that something called Capit. Charles the Bald implied that the Latin root of bargain is related to barca which meant “a small boat.”

From this he thinks that the back and forth nature of bargaining is related to the fact that a boat carries goods to and fro.

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t leave one with the impression that they are too convinced of this etymology and it seems that none of the more recently updated dictionaries are convinced either.

The American Heritage Dictionary suggests an Indo-European via Germanic route for the development of bargain.  This would connect the word with roots with meanings of “hiding” and “protecting things.”

This ties the word remotely to the word borrowing as well as berg which shows up in so many city names based on their histories as fortresses.

The meaning development is hypothesized by John Ayto as moving from “keep” and “protect” to “take on loan” or “borrow” then becoming “give” or “take” and finally “trade” or “haggle.”

Jumping back to the Diez theory concerning Charles the Bald.  It turns out that what was being referred to there were the Capitula of Charles the Bald.

Charles the Bald was king of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor back just before Alfred the Great arose as King of Wessex.

The Capitula of Charles the Bald were his laws.

One of the things I found in the fog was that this is where we get our word chapter.

The Latin capitula means “small head.” The title of the book would be its “big heading” but the title of each chapter would each be a “small heading.”

For Charles the Bald this was a set of headings on a legal document and similarly that is why when someone “capitulates” they are cooperating with a former adversary; they have done so according to a written legal agreement containing a set of headings.