I just found out that “Boer” is Dutch for peasant. How did the Dutch settlers of South Africa who were, for the most part, land and plantation owners get the name? Was it a derogatory name used by the British? What’s the difference between a Boer and an Afrikaner?
I understand that Boer has the connotation of “farmer,” and the townfolk were known as Burghers, at least at the time of the Anglo-Boer War.
Launcher may train without warning.
Here’s what I remember (I also refreshed my memory with a quick peek at [url=]Encyclopedia Britannica):
The Boers (boer = husbandsman or farmere) werer originally mostly wandering farmers. After the two Boer Republics (the South African Republic and the Orange Free State) were defeated by the British in 1802, the name boer was replaced by the name Afrikaners.
Here’s some Boer trivia:
Boer isn’t a put-down, but boor is. If someone is boorish, they obviously lack social graces and urbane charms. Thus, “boorish” is one of those words like “mean”, “villainous”, etc., which is derived from a medieval word for the peasantry, but has come to mean something pejorative.
I don’t think I explained that very well. Boer and boor are both derived from an old Germanic word for farmer. The older word is bur, the modern German word is Bauer. Villain (bad guy) comes from villein (peasant).
Mean (nasty) comes from mean (average), or so I thought, then I looked it up and it doesn’t look quite that clear.
What part of “I don’t know” don’t you understand?
Boris,
The notion of ‘mean’ as in common and ‘mean’ as in not-so-nice (I suppose this works for ‘base’, too) is interesting, as in German the word Gemein also menas both-- common (as in commonality or community/ corporate- Gemeinschaft) and nasty (as in “don’t be so gemein!”).