The History of the Word 'Villain'
Villains are scarier than they used to be
Upon being informed that villa," one might conjure up images of a mustache-twirling villain conniving evilly at his sprawling villa. The history of the word, though, is far more complicated than that.
'Villain' comes from a synonym of 'villager'. So where did all this villainy come from?
The story does start with that Latin word. Actually, it's a villager—which doesn't exactly evoke that evilly conniving villa-abiding villain.
The landed aristocracy (those at home in villas in the classical Latin sense of the word) dominating medieval society in the days of Middle English had all the power, politically and linguistically, and under their use of the word, the Middle English descendant of villanus meaning "villager" (a word styled as vilain or vilein) developed the meaning "a person of uncouth mind and manners." As the common equating of manners with morals gained in strength and currency, the connotations worsened, so that the modern word villain is no unpolished villager, but is instead (among other things) a deliberate scoundrel or criminal.
A glimmer of this history is visible in the dictionary entry for villain: the earliest meaning of the word is "thane. Research on whether such villeins twirled their mustaches has so far proved inconclusive.
