Q: How did the verb “repair” come to mean to move to another place as well as to fix something?
A: The verbs “repair” (to fix) and “repair” (to go) are two distinct words that have evolved from two different Latin terms.
As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the mending sense ultimately comes from the classical Latin reparare (to put back in order) while the going sense ultimately comes from the post-classical Latin repatriare (to return to one’s country).
Middle English borrowed the two terms in various spellings, meanings, and forms from Anglo-Norman, Middle French, and Old French.
The OED’s earliest English citation for “repair” to mean “go, proceed, set out, make one’s way” is from Sir Tristrem, a Middle English romance believed written sometime before 1300. Here’s an expanded version:
“Tristrem þouȝt repaire, / Hou so it euer be / To bide: ‘Þat cuntre will y se, / What auentour so be tide’ ” (“Tristrem thought to repair [to proceed], / Howsoever it might be / To abide [endure the giant Beliagog]: / ‘What country will I see, / What adventure so betide?’ ”).
The dictionary’s first example for “repair” used to mean “restore (a damaged, worn, or faulty object or structure) to good or proper condition” is from a Middle English translation of a Latin chronicle of world history:
“At þe repayrynge of Seynt Petres chirche, he wente to wiþ a mattok and opened first þe erþe” (“At the repairing of Saint Peter’s Church, he went forth with a mattock [an ax-like digging tool] and opened first the earth”). From Polychronicon, John Trevisa’s translation, dated sometime before 1387, of an earlier 14th-century work by Ranulf Higden.
Standard dictionaries now recognize both the fixing and going senses of “repair,” but the going sense (as in “Let us repair to the boudoir”) is now considered old- fashioned and sometimes used humorously.
Merriam-Webster online, for example, describes the use of “repair” to mean “go to (a place)” as “old-fashioned + formal,” and has this example: “After dinner, the guests repaired to the drawing room for coffee.”
The dictionary adds that the going sense is “sometimes used humorously,” and has this example: “Shall we repair to the coffee shop?”
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