While paying for some medicaments at Boots, I complained of the cold rain on my bald head and the nice woman behind the counter said: “Aah, bless.” Though only three years older than Madonna, I have reached a brief window of favour before entering into the endless neglect and ostracism of needy old age.

Only as recently as 2008 was the meaning of bless used by the woman in Boots added to the Oxford English Dictionary: “Expressing affection or benevolence (sometimes with patronising connotations).” The dictionary is unusually chatty on the puzzling contrarieties of meanings borne by bless in the preceding 1,100 years.

The original meaning of “mark (or affect in some way) with blood (or sacrifice)” was implied by the Old English verb bloedsian, related to the word for blood. But then it took on a parallel identity as the usual translation of the Latin benedicere, “speak well of”, itself shaped by its career as the translation for the Hebrew root brk “to bend”, hence “bend the knee, worship, praise, bless God, invoke blessings on, bless as a deity”. To this Semitic root, President Obama owes his first name, Barack.