Origins
The Hungarian and Latin words (Latin was the kingdom's language of administration until the 19th century) could also be used in the more general sense of "a nobleman," but they had the specific meaning identifying a noble person of this particular rank in the kingdom. The Slovak version of the title stemmed from an old broader word related to "land" (zem) that they were given when the largest number of them were ennobled, which was in return for helping King Béla IV to defend the country during the Mongol invasions of 1241-1242. To serve in arms when called on became one of the zemans' few obligations towards the king.
Read more about this topic: Zeman (nobleman)
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)