Your “Pedigree” Is a Crane’s Foot
Today, pedigree means a record of ancestry—usually for a purebred animal, though we also use it for a person’s distinguished background. But hidden inside the word is a bird’s foot.
Pedigree comes from the Anglo-Norman French expression pé de grue, meaning “crane’s foot.”
Medieval genealogists drew branching lines to connect parents with their descendants. The three-pronged marks resembled the long, spreading toes of a crane. These marks became associated with family descent, and pé de grue gradually changed in English pronunciation and spelling until it became pedigree.
At first, the word referred to the genealogical diagram itself. It then expanded to mean the ancestry recorded by that diagram. Later, animal breeders adopted it for documents tracing the lineage of horses, dogs, cattle, and other selectively bred animals.
Today, the meaning has stretched even further. A job candidate may have an impressive professional pedigree, while a company or idea may be praised for its intellectual pedigree—no family tree required.
Here is the memorable connection: pedigree shares the ancient Latin root ped-—meaning “foot”—with pedal, pedestrian, and pedicure.
So a word now associated with prestigious bloodlines began with something far less glamorous: a genealogist noticing that a family tree looked like the footprint of a crane. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries
