Somebody who enjoys having a privilege has some sort of special right or favor; an advantage in some area, whether they deserve it or not. “Privileges” are generally associated with the society you live in, and the idea goes way, way back to some pretty ancient societies. So does the word — but its history holds a couple of surprises.
The first interesting bit of trivia about “privilege” is that ever since its first appearance in English around the 1100s, none of its various spellings attained any sort of privileged status until pretty recently. And by “various spellings,” I mean that if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, they found 121 ways that “privilege” has been spelled over the centuries. Everything from “pryvylegge” to “privieledge,” and everything in between.
“Privilege” entered English either from the Latin word “privilegium” or from the French word “privilege.” Although it’s a general term now, originally it referred specifically to a benefit granted by the Catholic Pope to a person, exempting them from some ecclesiastical law or rule. That goes as far back as the second century CE, in Rome.
By the 1500s in England and in France, a “privilege” was the right to print something. Sometimes it was a document conferring an ecclesiastical advantage, but it quickly broadened to mean the right to print anything; a book, pamphlet, tract, or whatever.
“Privilege” is a compound word; it comes from “privi” (private) and “leg” (law). Etymologically, it means there’s a private law that applies to someone instead of the regular law that applies to everybody else. In France in the 1700s that idea was quite literally true. It probably goes back further than 1700, but in 1700s France (before the French Revolution, that is), families who were part of the nobility as well as rich families could buy their way into a special system of laws sanctioned by the king. What they would do would be to purchase a “position” or “station.” It could be something as ridiculous as “cheese inspector,” or it could even sound like something legitimate. But it wasn’t; all of these were dreamed up just for the purpose of conveying some sort of title or rank (if this reminds you of how the US Ambassadors to places like Monaco are chosen, well…). What the families got in exchange for their purchased title was that regular French law no longer applied to them — and in particular, regular French tax law no longer applied.
In effect the French government had created a system in which their version of “the 1%;” the super rich of the time got special benefits from the government. Aside from their initial payment (which was, admittedly, fairly substantial), they didn’t pay any more taxes. They had purchased their own private law, or privilege. This had both a short term and a long term effect for the government. Short term, the king had a way out of arguing or fighting with the upper crust about tax assessments and payments, and the government even got some immediate cash in the bargain. But long term? Well, it turned out that by 1789 the 99% had had quite enough of the arrangement — and of the whole government, for that matter. And around that time Joseph-Ignace Guillotine suggested a use for a sharp-bladed device you might have heard of. Things progressed from there.
By the way, Dr. Guillotine didn’t actually invent the guillotine; things like it had been used in Europe for at least 500 years by the time the new National Assembly (the ruling body created during and after the French Revolution) officially adopted the device. Dr. Guillotine did, however, have the privilege of being part of the committee that made the recommendation.
