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Rocket ships and medieval knights wouldn’t seem like they have a lot in common. We launch rocket ships into outer space—something those old knights, trotting around on horseback and wielding their lances, could hardly have ever imagined.

Launch entered English around 1300–50. Back then, launch meant “to rush, spring (into motion), send forth, hurl (a weapon).” Launch comes from French, which in turn comes from Late Latin �����Գ��������, “to wield a lance.” This verb, �����Գ��������, is based on the Latin noun lancea, “lance, spear.” The Latin lancea may ultimately come from an ancient Celtic word.

As you’ve probably guessed, the Latin lancea is the ultimate source of the English lance, originally “a long wooden shaft with a pointed metal head, used as a weapon by knights and cavalry soldiers in charging.” Slightly older than the verb launch, lance entered English around 1250–1300.

Now, the Late Latin verb �����Գ�������� also yields (through French) the English verb lance. Today, that verb is mainly used for actions of piercing and making incisions—much finer and more careful cuts, thankfully, than resulted from a knight’s lance. But in the early 1300s, lance was effectively a synonym for launch, also meaning “to throw or hurl.”

Dig deeper

When did we start saying we launched such things as boats? That sense of launch is so far first evidenced, as it happens, during the heydey of knights launching lances. This sense of launch, meaning “to a set (a boat or ship) in the water,” is recorded in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, a remarkable poem about that legendary leader of knights, King Arthur, dated to around 1400.

The basic, underlying sense of launch (“to send forth”) has inspired many other metaphorical extensions, from launching careers and launching products to book launches, campaign launches, and, by the time we entered the Space Age, rocket launches.

Speaking of King Arthur, his greatest knight—and most notorious, thanks to his love affair with Queen Guinevere—was Lancelot. As legend has it, Lancelot was also one of the greatest jousters of his day. Jousters fight on horseback with lances. Is that how Lancelot got his name?

That Lancelot is spelled like lance appears to be the result of association, the name shaped into its form under the influence of French. The origin of the name Lancelot is obscure, but it is probably ultimately Celtic or Germanic. You might say that efforts to root Lancelot simply in lance have failed to … launch.