bachelor

A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married. Etymology A bachelor is first attested as the 12th-century bacheler: a knight bachelor, a knight too young or poor to gather vassals under his own banner. The Old French presumably derives from Provençal and Italian , but the ultimate source of the word is uncertain. The proposed Medieval Latin * ("vassal", "field hand") is only attested late enough that it may have derived from the vernacular languages, rather than from the southern French and northern Spanish Latin . Alternatively, it has been derived from Latin ("a stick"), in reference to the wooden sticks used by knights in training. History From the 14th century, the term "bachelor" was also used for a junior member of a guild (otherwise known as "yeomen") or university and then for low-level ecclesiastics, as young monks and recently appointed canons. As an inferior grade of scholarship, it came to refer to one holding a "bachelor's degree". This sense of or is first attested at the University of Paris in the 13th century in the system of degrees established under the auspices of Pope Gregory IX as applied to scholars still . There were two classes of : the , theological candidates passed for admission to the divinity course, and the , who had completed the course and were entitled to proceed to the higher degrees. In the Victorian era, the term "eligible bachelor" was used in the context of upper class matchmaking, denoting a young man who was not only unmarried and eligible for marriage, but also considered "eligible" in financial and social terms for the prospective bride under discussion. Also in the Victorian era, the term "confirmed bachelor" denoted a man who desired to remain single.