Not long ago I was having a quiet drink in a certain pub in a certain southern county when the gushing alewife shouted over our heads that a Government minister was on his way and that we should all stand up when he came in the door, like, "as a matter of etiquette". I am glad to be able to report that people fell off bar stools laughing at the poor oinseach, and that your man was completely ignored when he did arrive with his retinue.
Etiquette is an old word whose meaning has changed a lot since it was introduced into English from French in the 14th century. The original French word was estiquette. It was a mark stuck in a post as a target in archery, and it, in turn, was derived from estiquer, to attach or stick to.
The French had borrowed the word from Middle Dutch steken, which is related to the Modern English stick. By the time estiquette became etiquette in French it had a few meanings. Soldiers knew it as a document setting out orders or billeting information. In the apothecary's shop it was a label attached to a bottle for identification purposes.
By the way, this is the source of the Modern English ticket and is still the primary meaning of etiquette in Modern French. In royal palaces, later on, the word meant a notice that told people how to behave in the presence of royalty; then the word came to mean the court ceremony itself.
Etiquette is no longer confined to palaces. Nowadays it includes the proper forms to be observed in any social situation. It does not extend to toadying to vote-seekers in public houses, as was admirably demonstrated by the people of the place I was having my modest taoscan in.
Margaret O'Brien wrote from Limerick asking about the history of the word lasagne, in singular lasagna. Well, it's Italian, and it comes from the assumed Vulgar Latin lasania, from lasanum, a cooking pot. This came from the Greek lasana, a plural noun, a three-legged metal stand on which cooking utensils were placed over a fire. The Greeks also had a lasanon, singular, a chamber pot; no, they didn't cook in it.
Lasagne first appeared in English in Baretti's English-Italian Dictionary of 1760. Browning, in 1849, was the first Englishman to praise the dish: "We shall feast our grape gleaners . . . With lasagne so tempting to swallow in slippery ropes". Hemingway called it the prince of Italian dishes. I could not agree.