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Kipper (medieval tournament) presents a "kipper" as a specific type of knight's servant, and is mainly unreferenced and seems a bit odd. Now, this term is not used in discussions of English tournaments (eg by Barber or Barker), as far as I have discovered, although Barber does refer to the "German turnier mit kipper" (which my school-girl German can translate). However, the term is present in German epic poetry, and thus in a number of works about the poetry, and is translated variously as "kipper" (with no specific explanation), "sergeant", "squire", or as a term to describe both squire (kneht) and sergeant (sargant) collectively (or non-specifically) perhaps as we might use "man-at-arms" to refer to squires and sergeants. I have an English translation of Bumke's Höfische Kultur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter, but the term is translated kipper without a clear presentation of its meaning in an English context. Anyone know? I have some untranslated notes from the original sources, the most pertinent being:

"jâ bî rehten triuwen mîn," sprach Gunthêr der rîche, "daz lobe ich enedelîche. swelhen ritter rüeret kippers hant, er sî knabe oder sarjant, den des turneis niht bestê, daz ez im an die hant gê" (Biterolf 8579-88)

"Von kipperen ein michel rote Mit starken matziuwen, Die hinden nâch bliuwen, Mohte man dâ schouwen" (Heinrich von dem Türlin. Die Krone 776-79)

Thanks in advance. Gwinva (talk) 02:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Tricky. Not something I know about. But kippen means to tilt in general, ja? And of course in English a tilt is a joust. OED:

I. 1. a. A combat or encounter (for exercise or sport) between two armed men on horseback, with lances or similar weapons, the aim of each being to throw his opponent from the saddle; = joust n. 1; also, the exercise of riding with a lance, or the like, at a mark, as the quintain.

Explicitly from the common verb to tilt, in the sense of totter and tip.
So... is there a simple connexion here, or have I merely raised a red herring (a smoked one, that is). If so, forgive my being so Lachs. (Lachst du mich aus?)
Actually, the truant squire might say of the jousting knight Am I my brother's kipper?
(Nah... should have let this one go through to the kipper.)
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 05:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, there's an explanation at Kipper (medieval tournament):

The origin of the word comes from various sources such as Icelandic kippa which means "to pull, snatch", the Danish word kippen which means "to seize" and the Middle High German which means "to beat or kick".

Needs editing, that. I'll fix it right now.
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 05:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I saw you'd cleaned it. I hadn't bothered: my instinct was to ditch it, since it seems a little fishy. But at least it's grammatical nonsense, now. As for the rest of your comments: kippered sensible, please.
Well, actually don't. Much more fun this way. (And it's been too many years since I learnt that school-girl German, but isn't Lachs salmon? in which case, another laugh.) The tilting meaning is interesting, but that might be another smoked herring, since while it means joust, it was a later word (OED has it 16th C, but I think it's earlier than that), coming from the 'tilt' or barrier introduced in the 15th century to stop knights colliding, which one source also calls a toile.
The kipper article has interesting etymologies, but without a source, who knows how accurate they are? Especially since the links take you to a Jewish skull cap and a Scottish village! But what I most want is a translator of Middle High German poetry, which seems to be the main (only?) source for this word. And someone who can tell me if the above note means 'a kipper, be he a squire or a sergeant' (implying the term covers them both) or 'a kipper, or a squire or sergeant' or some other variation. ie. is a kipper something exclusive to German society, and thus cannot be translated more specifically (and thus warrants its own (cleaned) page) or is it equivalent to an English rank (in which case merge).
Thanks for your help, anyway. It's always good herring from you. Gwinva (talk) 07:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
A pleasure. (Salmon? Shore! I was being laks, as I shad. I did that just for the halibut. But sea OED: "A kippered fish (salmon, herring, etc.); now esp. a herring so cured." And, just for completeness: "At the approach of the breeding season, the lower jaw of the male salmon becomes hooked upward with a sharp cartilaginous beak known as the kip." Some play is made on kip and kipper in JJ's Ulysses... but kip that to yourself.)
I don't understand quite where your uncertainties lie. Kipper (medieval tournament) does give one reference, as you can see. And that supports some but not all of the etymology. Why are you so suspicious of that article, in particular? You will also find in your OED this, among the twelve headword entries for kip:

[Obs.] kip, verb1...[ME. kippen: cf. ON. kippa to snatch, tug, pull; also MDu. kippen to catch, grip, G. dial. (Swiss) kippen to steal, ‘prig’.]... trans. To take hold of, take in the hand, seize, snatch, catch.

May that not be relevant also?
As for tilt and toile, hmmm... OED has tilt noun1 meaning "awning", etc. (see also tilt verb2), but makes no connexion with toile (Latin tela). And in tilt noun2 ("joust", "tipping over", etc.) a link is made with tilt verb1, but not with noun1 or verb2. So OED does not support the theory you mention. Where does it come from? Petit Robert knows no toile in jousting; TLFi has many military and other special applications of toile, but none in jousting; Greimas (Dictionnaire du moyen français) has for toile several meanings, including this: "Rideau que l'on dressait autour du terrain de joute", which doesn't sound like a barrier between knights, does it?
Best guess: a matter of multiple convergent etymologies. Bloody typical of those times, and those practices. I am suspicious of single neat accounts of these things.
But certainly the kipper was something of a sidekick to the skipper, wot? A junior to the jouster.
(Harenge me not with sharkastic gestes in reply! Good luck finding an MHG specialist. They're never around when you need them.)
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 10:24, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Let's not toil over toile, then; it seems a red smoked herring (as salmon once said to me). (And I can't be bothered trawling through my books to fish out the reference.) But OED me as much as you like (to owidee: he has owideed, she is owideeing, he will owidee), histories on the subject trace the term tilting to the introduction of the tilt: a barrier to separate the jousters, originally a rope or cord, eventually becoming a solid barrier. The term was not used to refer to a joust before the 15th century. OED has a sixteenth century usage as its earliest. (Ha! OEDs at dawn. Complete with seconds, to inspect the editions to ensure they are identical. I issued the challenge, so is it for you to choose the distance?) Anyway, later than the MHG poetry. To further complicate any link with kippern, the tilt was not used in German jousting rules. What is older is list (as in the lists, the fenced enclosure used for the fights), which (owideeing you) is seen in Chaucer. But a listing ship is tilting, no?
I wonder if we could translate it as varlet? Gravett makes reference to them attending knights in tournaments, and as the OED shows, the name can also mean sergeant.
Why was I suspicious of the article? Because I had never encountered the term outside Wikipedia, despite reading a number of histories, and the description of their role seems a bit dramatic. But then, I'm no reader of MHG poetry. (I have a copy of Ulrich von Liechtenstein's Frauendienst in translation, which was an amusing read: "Aunt, for what you've done for me/I'm just as thankful as can be./I'll always feel a debt to you;/you may be sure that this is true." It'd go down well in one of those greeting cards with insipid watercolour flowers on the front.) The reference was put in a few days ago, in response to my tagging of the article, but it contradicts the article: claims "kipper" is a term to describe squires and sergeants, which is certainly not the peasant or slave of the introduction. That suggests it could be merged with squire or something similar (but all those medieval tournamenty articles are in pretty poor shape).
Etymologies: who knows? Jolly poor show from the old chaps not to keep things simple by only creating words from one language, and writing down the source for us. Interesting, though. I admit I was out-owideed there (you've a killer backhand: been training with a master?).
Well, I'll joust kip at it, toiling away at full tilt, listing what I know. Or salmon else might help, or can smoke it out for me. Catch you. Gwinva (talk) 21:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
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