A “lodge” is a number of things, from a shelter to a hut to a seasonal house to an inn. If it’s an inn, that implies an innkeeper. But unless the quality of service in past centuries was particularly abysmal, why, when we have complaints, is it customary to “lodge” them?
“Lodge” appeared in English in the 1200s, and right from the beginning was both a noun and a verb. It comes from the French word “loge”, which also entered English intact, meaning private seating (a “box” in a theater). The French version came from the Latin “lobia,” which was a covered walk — that also entered English separately, as “lobby.” In English a lodge was originally just a small house or cottage, and traditionally referred to the place where the caretaker or gatekeeper lived on a large estate. It wasn’t until the 1800s that “lodge” began to mean a hotel.
The verb “lodge” started out meaning giving shelter, particularly temporarily — the place didn’t matter; it could be in your home, or just in a tent outside. By the 1700s it included offering hospitality for money, for which the phrase was “taking in lodgers.” For the most part, “to lodge” referred to people. But the word was also used to mean something that moved coming to a stop — for example, something might become “lodged” in your throat. A related use of “lodge” was to deposit something, as in a bank. Jonathan Swift wrote, in 1711: “I wish Mrs. Brent could contrive to put up my books in boxes and lodge them in some safe place.”
That sense of “lodge” meaning putting something in its proper place expanded as the idea of bureaucracy as a form of organization arose. The meaning came to include (according to the OED): “To deposit in court or with some appointed officer a formal statement of (an information, complaint, objection, etc.).” And that’s the source of the phrase “lodge a complaint;” it comes from the formation of bureaucratic agencies in 18th Century England.
As you might expect, “complaint” is even older. It comes from the Middle English “compleynte,” which was an adaptation of the French word “complainte.” It originally meant a “lamentation of grief,” and people quickly realized how useful a word it was. Thus it was almost immediately used to mean physical ailments, any expression of discontent or annoyance, and since those things progressed in a pretty well-known path even in those days, it very quickly became the first pleading to a court for anyone suing about their problems. Such as, for instance, poor quality lodgings at the Travel Lodge, about which they lodged a complaint but got no satisfaction, so the incident really lodged in their memory and they had to do something about it.
