{"id":648,"date":"2018-03-19T15:15:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T15:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/?p=648"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:08:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:08:47","slug":"eavesdroppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/2018\/03\/19\/eavesdroppers\/","title":{"rendered":"Eavesdroppers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A guest post by Dr George Redmonds, author of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I were accused of eavesdropping I might be mildly embarrassed but I would certainly not expect to
be punished for it. The truth is that we use the word loosely these days, not stopping to consider that the eavesdropper was once the scourge of the local community \u2013 a person who lurked at night under the eaves of a neighbour\u2019s house in the hope of gathering titbits of gossip that could then be turned to advantage. The serious nature of the misdemeanour is clear from definitions in Law dictionaries, one of which describes the eavesdropper as a person who \u2018hearkens after discourse \u2026 to frame slanders and mischievous tales\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Entry on Eaves-droppers from Blackstone’s\u00a0Commentaries on the Laws of England<\/em>, 1768.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There is no record of just when eavesdropping started to be considered as an offence but in 1377, in Methley near Wakefield, Matilda Seamster was indicted at the manor court for listening under the walls of her neighbours\u2019 houses at night and \u2018narrating idle speeches\u2019. That entry was in Latin, so the word \u2018eavesdropper\u2019 was not used but in Nottingham, in 1487, a jury found that Henry Rowley was a man who wandered around the village during the hours of darkness, and they indicted him as a common evys-dropper<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Yorkshire it was more usual for the offender to be called an \u2018eavesing dropper\u2019 or an \u2018easing dropper\u2019 and a few early examples are found in the court rolls. In 1577, for example, Elizabeth Banke of Acomb, a village near York, was ordered to\u00a0kepe hir house in the neight season and not be an esinge dropper<\/em>; in Rastrick, in 1664, Elizabeth Dyson was presented for\u00a0standeing under the ewse of the house of Joseph Goodheire as an ewseing dropper<\/em>\u00a0and was fined 10 shillings<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not difficult to see how the word had acquired its meaning. In Old English the noun \u2018eavesdrop\u2019 (yfesdrype) referred originally to the water that dripped, or dropped, from the eaves of a house, but from that it came to mean the edge of the roof itself. In 1338, the sale of a house in York, in the narrow lane called St Peter the Little, required the parties concerned to agree about the space they would need should repairs or rebuilding be necessary. Two English words that were included for greater clarity were gettes <\/em>and efsdropes<\/em>, that is to say the \u2018jetties\u2019 or overhanging upper storeys and the \u2018eavesdrops\u2019 or projecting parts of the roofs.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
The Shambles, York
showing\u00a0jetties\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0eavesdrops<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Clearly, both of these affected the space available between the buildings at ground level and that could be a problem in narrow town streets \u2013 like the Shambles in York. As a consequence it became customary to restrict a person from building right up to the edge of his land, lest the water dripping from his eaves should cause a problem. That custom appears to be implicit in a Kent charter dated 868 where the word \u2018yf\u00e6s dryp\u00e6\u2019 is on record for the first time. It was in the space between the house wall and the \u2018eavesdrip\u2019 that our more inquisitive ancestors found shelter and were privy to a neighbour\u2019s secrets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Etymologically, the Old English word \u2018efes\u2019 was actually singular but the final \u2013s has been mistaken for a plural and that is how we interpret \u2018eaves\u2019 now. When John Tyndall wrote in 1872 that \u2018water trickles to the eave and then drops down\u2019 he was employing what is called a \u2018back formation\u2019 \u2013 as we do when we use the word \u2018pea\u2019 and not \u2018pease\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

For more from the dictionary, please follow our Twitter feed @YorksDictionary.
You can click on the ‘dictionary’ tag below to see other blog-posts from the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edit 25\/01\/2019 <\/strong>The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is now available online at yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest post by Dr George Redmonds, author of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary. If I were accused of eavesdropping I might be mildly embarrassed but I would certainly not expect tobe punished for it. The truth is that we use the word loosely these days, not stopping to consider that the eavesdropper was once the … Continue reading Eavesdroppers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,30,75,49,139,138,131,136,130],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-14th-century","tag-16th-century","tag-17th-century","tag-architecture","tag-author-dr-george-redmonds","tag-crime","tag-language","tag-linguistics","tag-yorkshire-historic-dictionary"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","custom_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1780405718:281"],"_wp_old_date":["2026-06-02"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}