purveyor

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*weyd-“to see”
2. Latin · derived fromprōvidēre
3. Old French · derived frompurveour“one who procures or supplies necessities or things in general; one who arranges or prepares something”
4. Middle French · derived frompourveur
5. Anglo-Norman · derived frompurveour
6. Middle English · inherited frompurveiour“one who procures or supplies necessities, provider; city, military, religious, or household employee in charge of provisions, steward; one in charge, overseer; one who goes ahead to prepare the way, forerunner; one who arranges accommodations for a traveller; (figurative) one who gathers greedily”
7. English todaypurveyor

From Middle English purveiour (“one who procures or supplies necessities, provider; city, military, religious, or household employee in charge of provisions, steward; one in charge, overseer; one who goes ahead to prepare the way, forerunner; one who arranges accommodations for a traveller; (figurative) one who gathers greedily”), from Anglo-Norman purveour, Middle French pourveur, pourvoyeur, and (chiefly Northern) Old French purveour (“one who procures or supplies necessities or things in general; one who arranges or prepares something”) (modern French pourvoyeur), from porveoir, purveer, purveir (“to equip, furnish, provide, purvey; to foresee; to look at; to obtain, procure”) (modern French pourvoir) + -or (suffix forming agent nouns). Porveoir is derived from Latin prōvidēre, the present active infinitive of prōvideō (“to care for, look after; to foresee; to provide, see to”), from prō- (prefix meaning ‘before; forward’) + videō (“to see; to look out for, care for, provide, see to”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“to see”)). By surface analysis, purvey + -or (suffix forming agent nouns denoting people or things which do the actions denoted by the stems). Doublet of proveditor and provedore.

Words from the same roots