More about beadledom

Beadledom, “a gratuitous or officious display or exercise of authority, as by petty officials,” is a compound of beadle and the noun suffix –dom. In Old English a býdel meant “a herald, proclaimer, preacher,” from an original Germanic budilaz “a herald,” akin to Old High German butyl and German Büttel “bailiff, beadle.” The Germanic word was adopted into Romance, becoming bidello in Italian, bedel in Spanish and Old French, and bidellus or bedellus in Medieval Latin.

Nowadays a beadle is a minor officer in a parish who acts as an usher and maintains order during services, a sense the word has had since the late 16th century. The Middle English forms, such as budel, beodel, bidell (deriving from Old English býdel), were gradually replaced by French bedel beginning in the early 14th century; the modern spelling beadle dates from the early 17th century.

The abstract noun suffix –dom, indicating a state or condition, as in wisdóm “wisdom” and cyningdóm “kingdom,” is akin to Old English and Old Saxon –dóm, German –tum (as in Heiligtum “sanctuary, shrine, relic”), and was originally an independent noun meaning “putting, position, stature, judgment,” a derivative of the verb do. Beadledom entered English in the 1840s.

More about golden

The adjective golden is obviously a compound of the noun gold and the suffix –en, which is used to form adjectives of source or material from nouns. The odd thing about golden is that it is first recorded only about 1300. Golden is a Middle English re-formation of gold and –en that replaced earlier Middle English gulden, gilden, gelden, gylden “made of or consisting of gold,” from Old English gylden, gilden “golden.”

Golden age occurs in The Works and Days of the Greek didactic poet Hesiod (c700 b.c.) and has persisted throughout Western literature. Golden mean “the perfect moderate course or position that avoids extremes” entered English in the 1540s. Golden mean was also formerly called the golden mediocrity, a literal translation of Horace’s aurea mediocritās (Odes 2.10). The golden mean as an ethical principle is usually associated with Aristotelian ethics, it being a virtue, the midpoint between two opposite extremes, as, for example, the virtue of courage being the golden mean between the two opposite vices of cowardice and foolhardiness.

The Americanism golden handcuffs “a series of raises, bonuses, etc., given at intervals or tied to length of employment in order to keep an executive from leaving the company,” dates to the mid-1960s; golden handshake “a special incentive, such as generous severance pay, given to an older employee as an inducement to elect early retirement,” dates to the late 1950s; and golden parachute “an employment contract guaranteeing an executive of a company substantial severance pay and other perquisites in the event of job loss caused by the company’s being sold or merged,” dates to the early 1980s.

More about plebeian

English plebeian, adjective and noun, ultimately derives from the Latin adjective and noun plēbēius “pertaining to the common people, a commoner.” The adjective also meant “common, ordinary, everyday” and was usually disparaging. Plēbēius derives from the noun plebs (also plēbēs, stem plēb-) “the general citizenry (as opposed to the patricians).” Plebs (plēbēs) is akin to Greek plêthos “great number, multitude, the majority of people, the commons”; the Latin and Greek nouns derive from a Proto-Indo-European plēdhwo-, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root pele-, plē– “to fill.” Plebeian entered English in the 16th century.