star-spangled
We all know that Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner in 1814 after watching the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor:
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
But most of us don’t know what a spangle is or that Key wasn’t the first to refer to the U.S. flag as the star-spangled banner. Key wasn’t even the first poet to write an ode to the flag that was set to the tune of Anacreon in Heaven, which is better known today as the melody of the U.S. national anthem.
A spangle is a shiny piece of metal used to decorate fabric—a sequin. The origin is a bit muddied, with a precursor in Old English, but with the modern meaning heavily influenced by a borrowing from Middle Dutch.
In Old English, a spang is a clasp or fastener. The word appears in the Old English biblical poem Genesis in a passage about Satan preparing to travel to Earth to tempt Adam and Eve:
Angan hine þa gyrwan Godes andsaca,
fus on frætwum —hæfde fæcne hyge—
hæleð-helm on heafod asette and þone full hearde geband,
spenn mid spangum.
(Then God’s adversary began to prepare himself, eager in his adornments—he had deceitful intentions—he set a helmet of invisibility on his head and fastened it very firmly, bound with clasps.)
By the beginning of the fifteenth century, we see that spang had lost the meaning of a clasp and acquired that of a small, metal ornament. This shift in meaning is probably from a borrowing of the Middle Dutch spang, which had the ornament sense in addition to that of a clasp. And in the fifteenth century we start seeing the form spangle. Here is an example from a 6 June 1462 inventory of items, made by John Paston, that had belonged to Sir John Falstolf (1380–1459, the real-life namesake of Shakespeare’s fictional character):
Item, a litell cheyne of gold wyth a perle hangyng therby and ij spangell[es] of gold.
(The Paston family papers are a treasure trove of linguistic and historical daily about ordinary, albeit aristocratic, life in the fifteenth century.)
And we see the verb to spangle, meaning to decorate with the same, by 1548, when it appears in Edward Hall’s description of Henry VIII’s New Year’s festivities 1510–11:
In came the kyng with fiue other, appareled in coates, the one halfe of russet satyn, spangeld with spangels of fine gold, the other halfe riche clothe of gold, on their heddes cappes of russet satin, embroudered with workes of fine gold bullio[n].
The adjective spangled is in place by 1555, when it appears in a description of the clothing of the people of Panchaia, an island said to be in the Indian Ocean (exactly where Panchaia was is uncertain; it may be fictional, or perhaps it is Socotra or Bahrain):
Their garmentes by the reason of the finesse of the wolle of their shiepe specially aboue other, are verye softe and gentle clothe. Bothe menne and women vse ther, to sette oute them selues with Iuelles of golde, as cheines, braselettes, eareringes, tablettes, owches, ringes, Annuletes, buttons, broches, and shoes embraudred, and spangled with golde, of diuers colours.
And we see star-spangled by 1600 in poetic lines attributed to Thomas Dekker in Robert Allott’s collection of poetry titled Englands Parnassus:
Great Delian Priest, we to adore thy name,
Haue burnt fat thighes of Bulls in hallowed flame,
vvhose sauour wrapt in smoake and clowdes of fire
To thy starre-spangled Pallace did aspire.
Star-spangled became a rather common adjective referring to the night sky and other heavenly things.And the term was applied to the American flag as early as 1805 when it appears in a patriotic song set to the tune of Anacreon in Heaven, the same tune that Key’s poem would be set to and which is familiar to us today as the US national anthem. The song was printed in Baltimore’s American and Commercial Daily Advertiser on 14 December 1805. According to that paper, it had been sung at a 30 November 1805 dinner at McLaughlin’s Tavern in Georgetown (now part of Washington, DC) in honor of naval captains Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart, heroes of the First Barbary War (1801–05). The third verse of that song reads:
In the conflict resistless, each toil they endur’d
Till their foes shrunk dismay’d from the war’s desolation;
And pale beam’d the Crescent, it’s splendour obscur’d
By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation,
Where each flaming star gleam’d a meteor of war,
And the turban’d heads bow’d to the terrible glare,
Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
Note that Key was a resident of Georgetown at this time and may have attended the dinner. He also called Baltimore home and would have been familiar with that city’s newspapers. The lyrics, especially the chorus, marked in italics in the paper, bear a similarity to the lines that Key would later write.
That 1805 song used the phrase star-spangled flag, but star-spangled banner is applied to the American flag as early as 1808, in an Ode to Independence, also set to the tune of Anacreon in Heaven. The poem was published in another Baltimore paper, the Whig, on 27 June 1808. The second verse of the ode reads:
Inspired by the genius, our fathers unfurl’d
Her star-spangled banner, and own’d her dominion;
Bade their cannon indignant proclaim to the world
Their oath to be freemen in act and opinion.
While her eagle on high,
Flashing fire from his eye,
Saw the olive disdain’d—and his thunders let fly.
Key would write his version, originally titled The Defence of Fort M'Henry, six years later.
Sources:
Allott, Robert. Englands Parnassus: or the Choysest Flowers of Our Moderne Poets.” London: For N. Ling, C. Burby, and T. Hayes, 1600, 373. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
The Fardle of Facions Conteining the Aunciente Maners, Customes, and Lawes, of the Peoples Enhabiting the Two Partes of the Earth, Called Affrike and Asia. London: John Kingston and Henry Sutton, 1555, sig. H2v–H3r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
“Genesis.” In Old Testament Narratives. Daniel Anlezark, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 7. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2011, 33–34, lines 442–45.
Hall, Edward. The Vnion of the Two Nobel and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke. London: Richard Grafton, 1548, fol. 16r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
“Inventory and indenture: Draft 1462, 6 June.” Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part 1. Norman Davis, ed. Early English Text Society S.S. 20. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004, 1:108. Archive.org.
Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, s.v. spang, n., spangled, adj.
“An Ode to Independence.” Whig (Baltimore), 27 June 1808, 3/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2016, s.v. star-spangled, adj., star-spangled banner, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. spangled, adj., spangle, v., spangle, n.1, spang, n.1.
Photo credit: David Wilton, 2024. Licensable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.