ordealn.

Etymology: Cognate with Old Frisian ordēl , urdēl judgement, ruling, trial by ordeal, Middle Dutch ordeel , ordel , ordeil judgement, ruling, trial by ordeal, distribution (among heirs) (Dutch oordeel ), Old Saxon urdēli judgement (Middle Low German ōrdēl , ōrdeil , ȫrdēl , ōrdēle , ōrtēl judgement, process of reaching a judgement or judicial decision, conflict, opinion), Old High German urteili , urteilī , urteil judgement, (legal) decision (Middle High German urteil , urteile legal judgement, decision, opinion, German Urteil judgement, opinion, reasoning, decision) < the base of Old English adǣlan to divide, separate, Old Saxon adēljan to recognize, to allocate, to judge, to condemn, Old High German irteilen , arteilen , erteilen to judge, pass judgement, to evaluate, to award judicially (Middle High German erteilen to judge, to decide, to allot, allocate, German erteilen to give (an order, advice, a rebuke, permission), to grant, confer) < the Germanic base of or- prefix + the Germanic base of deal v. Compare post-classical Latin ordalium (from 928 in British sources; probably < Old English), ordela, ordelum (from 12th cent. in British sources), ordolaium (1419 in a British source); also Old French (Flanders) ordeil (1198), French ordalie (1693).Old English ordāl shows the expected form reflecting a Germanic *-ai- ; the (less common) form with -ē- is perhaps due to the influence of forms in one of the continental Germanic languages (in which the word has a less narrow application and wider currency); the (rare) form with -o- is unexplained. It is uncertain whether there is continuity between Old English and later use, which may entirely represent a reborrowing from post-classical Latin. In the Middle English period apart from quot. a1425 at sense 1 (which occurs in a part of the poem which does not closely follow a foreign model) the word is restricted to Latin texts, where it appears collocated with orrest n.; before the 15th cent. it is found only in quot. a1275 at sense 1, where both terms are apparently misunderstood (compare also oredelf n.). The form ordal in quot. a1425 at sense 1, and the occurrence in the early modern period of the forms ordal , ordale in sources which are not of northern provenance, strongly suggests reborrowing, perhaps partly from post-classical Latin and partly as a learned adoption of the Old English word; compare also ordalium n. and ordalian adj. in the same period. The spelling ordeal is apparently earliest attested in R. Verstegan Restitution Decayed Intelligence (1605) iii. 63, where the word is explicitly associated with deal n.¹: ‘Or is heer vnderstood for due or right, deal, for parte, as yet wee vse it, so as ordeal, is asmuch as to say as due-parte, and at this present it is a word generally vsed in Germanie, & the Netherlands, in stede of dome or iudgement’. Most 18th-cent. dictionaries, including Sheridan (1780) and Walker (1791), give the pronunciation with stress on the first syllable as /ˈɔːdiːəl/. This word-initial primary stress continues to be given by the majority of 19th-cent. American and British sources. N.E.D. (1903) gives the pronunciations (ǭ·ɹdiăl, ǭ·ɹdīl) /ˈɔːdiːəl/ /ˈɔːdiːl/, and attributes the placing of primary stress on the first syllable to ‘ignorance of the etymological relationship’ with deal. Other early 20th-cent. sources also show a shift in stress as evidenced in Jones (1917) who records only primary stress on the second syllable and Webster (1934) who records the possibility of stress on either the second or first syllable.