The English title "lord" hides a very ordinary domestic image inside it. Its Old English ancestor was hlāfweard, a compound of hlāf ("loaf, bread") and weard ("guardian, keeper"). A lord was, originally, the "bread-warden" — the head of a household responsible for feeding everyone in it.
A Title Compressed by Time
Old English was a heavily inflected language, and over the centuries its long compound words were ground down by everyday speech. Hlāfweard became hlāford, then laverd, and finally lord. By the late 14th century, the modern monosyllable was the standard form. The original "loaf" inside the word was no longer audible.
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From Household to Hierarchy
The Anglo-Saxon household model — one man feeds many — scaled neatly to the feudal system that the Normans imposed after 1066. A "lord" was now any man with land and dependents who looked to him for sustenance and protection. By the late medieval period, "lord" was an established title for noblemen, then for God, and eventually a generic term of formal address for any person of high rank.
Bread Words All the Way Down
The original Old English household-and-bread vocabulary produced an interlocking set of words: lord (the loaf-warden), lady (the loaf-kneader), and retainer-class words like hlāf-æta ("loaf-eater") for a servant or dependent. The whole social structure of an early medieval household was, in language at least, organised around the loaf.