May I hang up your plane?

A Wordlady reader has asked about the origins of the word hangar. That's the place for storing planes, not to be confused with the hanger on which you hang your clothes. Surprisingly, hangar comes from French (it certainly doesn't look like a French word). The word ultimately derives from two Frankish words, haim and gard. Haim meant "village", and the Anglo-Saxon relative of this word, ham, turns up in "hamlet" (the small town, not the moody prince) and also in many English place names, "Birmingham", for instance. Gard meant "enclosure" and is also the source for our word "garden". So a haimgard was an enclosure attached to a house, and then a shed for storing farm equipment and other large items. When planes were invented, the word was adapted for a new need. In the early days of flying, English borrowed quite a few French aviation words (aileron, fuselage, and even aeroplane are other examples)and thus hangar was adopted for the "aircraft garage".