The term rescue dates back to an early fourteenth-century tale about a knight who had to perform noble deeds to win the affections of his beloved. It was spelled in various ways such as resceve, reschewe, reschow, reskeve, reschue, reskaw, all stemming from the Old French verb rescorre, meaning “protect”. This Old French word originated from the Latin prefix re-, meaning “again” (from Proto-Indo-European wert, “to turn”), and the root excutere, meaning “shake off” or “drive away”. The concept of rescuing was associated with the act of repetitively driving away negative elements. Excutere is a combination of the prefix ex- (from Proto-Indo-European eghs, “out”) and the verb quatere, meaning “to shake”. Ultimately, quatere, also the origin of quash, can be traced back to a Proto-Indo-European word resembling kes, which translates to “cut”.
