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A Celtic origin has also been suggested; see the quote under sense 3 of Latin barō. However, the OED takes the hypothetical Proto-Celtic*bar-(“hero”) to be a figment.
There were a few exotics among them — some South American boys, sons of Argentine beef barons, one or two Russians, and even a Siamese prince, or someone who was described as a prince.
2013 August 10, Lexington, “Keeping the mighty honest”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.
The first thing a baron does is to accumulate a supply of tobacco. He spends every penny he can earn on laying it in […]
1961, Peter Baker, Time out of life, page 51:
Nevertheless, from my own agonies of the first few months, after which I did not miss smoking at all, I could appreciate the need of others. It was in this atmosphere of craving that the 'barons' thrived. Barons are prisoners who lend tobacco.
1980, Leonard Michaels, Christopher Ricks, The State of the Language, page 525:
In British prisons tobacco still remains the gold standard which is made to back every transaction and promise. The official allowance is barely sufficient for individual smoking needs, but tobacco may expensively be borrowed or bought from a baron, possibly through his runner.
Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.
13th c, A. López Ferreiro, editor, Fueros Municipales de Santiago y de su tierra, page 699:
aquel pecado escumungado que fazen os barones unos con outros
that excommunicated sin that men do with one another
c.1295, Ramón Lorenzo, editor, La traducción gallega de la Crónica General y de la Crónica de Castilla, Ourense: I.E.O.P.F, page 814:
ca esta (he) muy boa et nobre rreyna dona Berĩguela co tamana aguça gardou sempre este fillo et llj meteu no curaçõ feyto de obras de piedade de ome barõ, mãçebo et nino, et todo linagẽ de omes -esto he barõ et moller-
because this very noble and excellent queen, Lady Berenguela, with great care protected her son and put in his heart acts of piety of adult man, young man and boy, and of all the lineage of men - that is, man and woman -
Xavier Varela Barreiro, Xavier Gómez Guinovart (2006–2018) “baron”, in Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: ILG
Inherited from Latinbarōnem. Sense 3 taken from the Old French cognate baron. Coromines considers the more general sense 2, which is attested earlier, to be indigenous.
Los de ysmael vendieron a ioseph a furtifar el egypcio de pharaon conestable. en essa ora, exio iuda asos ermanos e vna mugier, fija de un baron de Canaan
The people of Ishmael sold Joseph to Potiphar the Egyptian Pharaoh's Constable. At that time, Juda departed to his brothers and a woman, the daughter of a man of Canaan.
Aleksander Saloni (1899) “baron”, in “Lud wiejski w okolicy Przeworska”, in M. Arct, E. Lubowski, editors, Wisła : miesięcznik gieograficzno-etnograficzny (in Polish), volume 13, Warsaw: Artur Gruszecki, page 237