Churlish
has come to mean "vulgar," "surly," and
"intractable"—if you know your English history. In Anglo-Saxon
England, a churl, or ceorl, was a freeman of the lowest rank who owned and
cultivated a small farm. He had certain rights and had upward mobility to rise
to the rank of thane. After the Norman Conquest, however, many churls became
serfs, a change in status that meant losing not just social mobility but
geographical mobility as well. The lowest rungs of a social system often serve
as inspiration for a language's pejoratives, and churl eventually came to be
used as a term for a rude, ill-bred person.
