Fun for Friday: The Etymology of an Academic “Fellow”
Image by fredy martinez enamorado from Pixabay
I recently heard someone refer to themself as a “Fellow” in an academic sense, which got me thinking about the origin of that word in that specific context.
The origin of “fellow” (in a non-academic sense) is that of a companion or partner in a business sense, going back to Proto-Indo-European and coming to English through Old Norse.
The word was adopted into academic settings prior to 1600 and referred to “those senior graduate members who had been elected to the foundation [of a university] by the corporate body, sharing in the government and receiving a fixed emolument out of the revenues of the college” (from Britannica). So even here, it still has the connection to a business partnership.
But in more recent academia, the title has shifted to being either more of an honorary title or one tied to someone who has received a fellowship (a form of scholarship, typically but not always for post-graduate work). And though the Wiktionary page for “fellowship” doesn’t state it explicitly, it seems likely that fellowships are seen as funded by the “Fellows” of an institution of higher learning with the connotation of said Fellows being part of the business partnership explained above.
In looking into this topic, I also came across someone asking whether “Fellow” is a gender-neutral term, and the answer seems to be “yes.” Even though “fellow” can be used to refer to people presenting as men (though it often is “fellas” in modern parlance), it’s still got a gender-neutral usage in things like “my fellow co-workers” or the famous “my fellow Americans.”
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