When we think about a lullaby, we immediately remember soft, soothing music meant to encourage rest and sleep. But…why that word?
My husband and I were wondering about this at bedtime one night, and as I pondered it, I said, “Surely it’s related to lull.” But was I right?
As a matter of fact, I was. 😉 Lull dates from the early 1300s, from the previous form of lullen, which means “to calm or hush to sleep.” It’s thought to be a bit of an onomatopoeia word, based on the wordless lu-lu-lu (or as we spell it now, la-la-la) song that a parent would sing or hum to their child to soothe and calm and put to sleep. Swedish, Dutch, German, and Sanskrit all have similar words!
Lullaby had developed as a noun to describe this singing by around 1580, a combination of lullen + by. But…where did that “by” come in? That’s a little less certain. Some etymologists suggest it might be borrowed from goodbye, but others think it’s just a meaningless extension, tacked on because it sounded good.
As I was musing on the word at bedtime, I observed that rock-a-bye sounds very similar as is a lullaby. This is from the 1800s and combines the act of rocking a baby to sleep with that -by ending of lullaby.
Anyone else ready for a nap??
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
