In origin, the term chivalry means "horsemanship", formed in Old French, in the 11th century, from chevalerie (horsemen, knights), itself from the Medieval Latin caballarii, the nominative plural form of the term caballārius.[9][10] The French word chevalier originally meant "a man of aristocratic standing, and probably of noble ancestry, who is capable, if called upon, of equipping himself with a war horse and the arms of heavy cavalryman and who has been through certain rituals that make him what he is".[11] Therefore, during the Middle Ages, the plural chevalerie (transformed in English into the word "chivalry") originally denoted the body of heavy cavalry upon formation in the field.[12] In English, the term appears from 1292 (note that cavalry is from the Italian form of the same word).[Note 3]