ACeltic origin has also been suggested; see the quote under sense 3 of Latinbarō. However, the OED takes the hypotheticalProto-Celtic*bar-(“hero”) to be a figment.
There were a few exotics among them — some South American boys, sons of Argentine beefbarons, one or two Russians, and even a Siamese prince, or someone who was described as a prince.
2013 August 10, Lexington, “Keeping the mighty honest”, inThe Economist[1], volume408, number8848:
British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that pressbarons will only defy the mighty so far.
The first thing abaron does is to accumulate a supply of tobacco. He spends every penny he can earn on laying it in[…]
1961, Peter Baker,Time out of life, page51:
Nevertheless, from my own agonies of the first few months, after which I did not miss smoking at all, I could appreciate the need of others. It was in this atmosphere of craving that the 'barons' thrived.Barons are prisoners who lend tobacco.
1980, Leonard Michaels, Christopher Ricks,The State of the Language, page525:
In British prisons tobacco still remains the gold standard which is made to back every transaction and promise. The official allowance is barely sufficient for individual smoking needs, but tobacco may expensively be borrowed or bought from abaron, possibly through hisrunner.
Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a greatbaron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.
13th c, A. López Ferreiro, editor,Fueros Municipales de Santiago y de su tierra, page699:
aquel pecado escumungado que fazen osbarones unos con outros
that excommunicated sin thatmen do with one another
c.1295, Ramón Lorenzo, editor,La traducción gallega de la Crónica General y de la Crónica de Castilla, Ourense: I.E.O.P.F, page814:
ca esta (he) muy boa et nobre rreyna dona Berĩguela co[m] tamana aguça gardou sempre este fillo et llj meteu no curaçõ feyto de obras de piedade deome barõ, mãçebo et nino, et todo linagẽ de omes -esto hebarõ et moller-
because this very noble and excellent queen, Lady Berenguela, with great care protected her son and put in his heart acts of piety ofadult man, young man and boy, and of all the lineage of men - that is,man and woman -
Barreiro, Xavier Varela; Guinovart, Xavier Gómez (2006–2018), “baron”, inCorpus Xelmírez: corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval [Corpus Xelmírez: linguistic corpus of Medieval Galicia] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela:Instituto da Lingua Galega
Inherited fromLatinbarōnem. Sense 3 taken from theOld French cognatebaron. Coromines considers the more general sense 2, which is attested earlier, to be indigenous.
Los de ysmael vendieron a ioseph a furtifar el egypcio de pharaon conestable. en essa ora, exio iuda asos ermanos e vna mugier, fija de unbaron de Canaan
The people of Ishmael sold Joseph to Potiphar the Egyptian Pharaoh's Constable. At that time, Juda departed to his brothers and a woman, the daughter of aman of Canaan.
Aleksander Saloni (1899), “baron”, in “Lud wiejski w okolicy Przeworska”, in M. Arct, E. Lubowski, editors,Wisła : miesięcznik gieograficzno-etnograficzny[3] (in Polish), volume13, Warsaw: Artur Gruszecki, page237
