Etymological Reference Online

Semitic, major subgroup of Afroasiatic language family, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian.

Egyptian, Afroasiatic (Hamitic) language spoken in ancient Egypt.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

Old North French, the dialect of northern France before the 1500s, especially that of coastal Normandy and Picardy.

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

L. Classical Latin, the Italic language of ancient Rome until about 4c.
lit.

Ecclesiastical; usually in reference to Greek as used by the early Christians.
echoic A word that sounds like what it means.

Lithuanian, the Baltic language spoken in Lithuania.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

Armenian, the Indo-European language of Armenia.

Old Church Slavonic, the earliest attested Slavic language, known from 9c.

Old Church Slavonic, the earliest attested Slavic language, known from 9c.

Periodically, using Internet technology, I have acquired lists of words people have searched for in this site that do not have headword entries, and researched the words and added them to the text.

Hungarian, Finno-Ugric (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Hungary; Magyar.

Imperative, the verbal category expressing commands or orders.
imperfect Tense/aspect category indicating progressive aspect: I was saying is in the "past imperfect" tense.

Feminine, the grammatical gender in highly inflected I.E. languages that denotes females and many other words to which no distinction of sex is apparent.

Middle Low German, the Low German language as written and spoken c.1100-c.1500.

Perfective, the tense or formation expressing the notion of "completion."

For slang and colloquial usage, I consult the Kipfer/Chapman "Dictionary of American Slang" (which despite its title embraces many Britishisms), DARE, and Farmer.

B.C.E.
asterisk (*) Words beginning with an asterisk are not attested in any written source, but they have been reconstructed by etymological analysis, such as Indo-European *ped-, the root of words for "foot" in most of its daughter tongues.
back formation The process by which an apparently complex word is erroneously split up and a new, simple form produced from it (burgle is a back formation of burglar).
c.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

Persian, also known as Farsi, modern Iranian language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan.
pers.

Armenian, the Indo-European language of Armenia.

North Sea Gmc. the closely related languages of the Germanic tribes along the coastal and lowland regions of the North Sea coast of continental Europe before the period of the Anglo-Saxon migration, comprising Old Low Franconian, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old English.

French, Romanic language spoken cheifly in France.

The recent availability of newspaper and magazine archives in computer files, and the flood of material presented in the searchable Google books project, opens a vast field for careful research -- careful because the Google publications too often are misdated on the Google introduction pages.

Gallo-Romance or Gallo-Roman, the vernacular language of France c. 500-900 C.E.; intermediate between Vulgar Latin and Old French.

Hungarian, Finno-Ugric (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Hungary; Magyar.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

Gaelic, Celtic language of Highland Scotland.

Anglo-L. Anglo-Latin, the form of Medieval Latin used in England during the Middle English period.

Diminutive, a form of a word used to express smallness, as ringlet is the dim. of ring.
dissimilation Process by which a word with a repeated sound changes one of the two; Latin peregrinus became Fr. pelerin ("pilgrim") by dissimilation.

Frequentative, case denoting recurring action.

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

The recent availability of newspaper and magazine archives in computer files, and the flood of material presented in the searchable Google books project, opens a vast field for careful research -- careful because the Google publications too often are misdated on the Google introduction pages.

Mercian The Anglian dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
metathesis Inversion of segments within a word; Old English þridda became Modern English third through metathesis of -r- and -i.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

Mexican Spanish, Spanish as spoken in Mexico.

Anglo-L. Anglo-Latin, the form of Medieval Latin used in England during the Middle English period.

East Frisian, variant of Frisian spoke on the islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
e.g. abbreviation of L. exempli gratia "for the sake of example."

Middle Irish, Irish as written and spoken in the high Middle Ages.

To compile an entry, I look up the word in my major sources: the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition), the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (1988), Weekley’s "Etymological Dictionary of Modern English" (1921), and Ernest Klein's “Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (1971).

My tendency at first was to “clump” the words -- have, say, sleep, sleeper, sleepwalking, sleepy, slept all under one head.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

North Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
nom.

Wolof Niger-Congo language of Senegal and Gambia.

Reduplicated, an inflextional device in which a syllable or part of a syllable is copied.

[As of January 2004, OED Online is now available by annual subscription to individuals for $295 a year, and has recently introduced monthly subscriptions for $29.95.]

Old Prussian, a West Baltic language similar to Lithuanian, extinct since 17c.
optative A mood expressing wishing.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

All are presumed to share a common ancestor, PIE.
imitative "a convenient term to include onomatopoeic and echoic" [Weekley].
imper.

Accusative, typically the case of the direct object, but also sometimes denoting "motion towards."

Assyrian, Akkadian dialect spoken in the empire that flourished on the Tigris River 7c.

German, West Germanic language spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, technically "New High German."
ger.

In old Germanic languages, the "fourth case," catch-all for I.E. dative, ablative, locative and other cases.
deriv.

Provençal, Romance language of several dialects in southern France.
prp.

Present participle, a form of a verb that can be a verb, an adverb, and even a noun (gerund), and which denotes action which is onging.

Late Latin, the literary Latin language as spoken and written c.300-c.700.
loan-transl.

Objective, designating or of the case of the object of a transitive verb or preposition.
obs.

Dative, typically the case of the indirect object, but sometimes also denoting "motion toward."

Past participle, a form of a verb that can be both a verb and an adjective, and which denotes action which has been completed.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

Iranian, the branch of Indo-European languages spoken on and around the plateau of Iran, including modern Farsi and Kurdish.
irreg.

The time scale is much debated, but the most recent date proposed for it is about 5,500 years ago.
pl.

Dialectal or dialect.
dim.

Old Church Slavonic, the earliest attested Slavic language, known from 9c.

All are presumed to share a common ancestor, PIE.
imitative "a convenient term to include onomatopoeic and echoic" [Weekley].
imper.

Mercian The Anglian dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
metathesis Inversion of segments within a word; Old English þridda became Modern English third through metathesis of -r- and -i.

Gerund, a verbal noun, in English usually ending in -ing.

Gallo-Romance or Gallo-Roman, the vernacular language of France c. 500-900 C.E.; intermediate between Vulgar Latin and Old French.

Low German, "plattdeutsch," the modern descendant of Old Saxon.
masc.

Middle High German, the High German language as written and spoken c.1100-c.1500.

L. Classical Latin, the Italic language of ancient Rome until about 4c.
lit.

Old Norse, the Norwegian language as written and spoken c.100 to 1500 C.E., the relevant phase of it being "Viking Norse" (700-1100), the language spoken by the invaders and colonizers of northern and eastern England c.875-950.

More than 90 percent of it was from Vulgar Latin, with a smattering of Celtic and Germanic, plus some M.L. learned terms.

Middle High German, the High German language as written and spoken c.1100-c.1500.

Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
adj.

-Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to "El otro, el mismo."

Old High German, the ancestor of the modern literary German language, spoken in the upland regions of Germany; German language as written and spoken from the earliest period to c.1100.

Assyrian, Akkadian dialect spoken in the empire that flourished on the Tigris River 7c.

Imperative, the verbal category expressing commands or orders.
imperfect Tense/aspect category indicating progressive aspect: I was saying is in the "past imperfect" tense.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Present-preterite, a group of Germanic verbs (mostly auxiliaries such as may, shall, can) whose original pt. forms split off and became separate pres. tense verbs (might, should, could).
pret.

Old Prussian, a West Baltic language similar to Lithuanian, extinct since 17c.
optative A mood expressing wishing.

Kentish The dialect of Old English spoken by the Jutes who formed the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Causative, a form of a verb expressing the notion "cause X to Y." The en- in enrich is a causative prefix.

L. Classical Latin, the Italic language of ancient Rome until about 4c.
lit.

Wolof Niger-Congo language of Senegal and Gambia.

Ablative, the Latin case of adverbial relation, typically expressing the notion "away from," or the source or place of an action.
acc.

Ancient Greek formed its perfect tenses by reduplication: leipo "I leave," le-loipa "I have left."

Old Provençal, Romanic language of the troubadors, spoken in southern France before c.1500.

Anglo-French, the French written in England from the Norman Conquest (1066) through the Middle Ages; the administrative and legal language of England 12c.-17c.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Serbian, eastern variant of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, generally written in Cyrillic.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

Caxton William Caxton (d.1491), the first English printer, responsible for a number of spelling changes.

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Egyptian, Afroasiatic (Hamitic) language spoken in ancient Egypt.

English lacks a pure future tense, but Latin and other languages have it.

Oscan, the Italic language of the Samnites in middle and southern Italy in pre-Roman times.

North Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
nom.

Klein, Rabbi of Nové Zámky in Czechoslovakia from 1931-44, was deported to Dachau and returned home after liberation to find "that my father, my wife, my only child Joseph, and two of my three sisters had suffered martyrdom in Auschwitz."

My tendency at first was to “clump” the words -- have, say, sleep, sleeper, sleepwalking, sleepy, slept all under one head.

But the tyranny of search engines has tended to turn me into a “splitter.”

Dative, typically the case of the indirect object, but sometimes also denoting "motion toward."

From these I attempted to flesh out the entries and give them some nuance and answer some questions I had about words that the “big books” did not notice.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

Accusative, typically the case of the direct object, but also sometimes denoting "motion towards."

Turkish, Turkic (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Turkey.
ult.

Feminine, the grammatical gender in highly inflected I.E. languages that denotes females and many other words to which no distinction of sex is apparent.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

W.Saxon West Saxon, the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex.

Preterite, the simple past tense.
priv.

Ancient Greek formed its perfect tenses by reduplication: leipo "I leave," le-loipa "I have left."

Vocative, the case or expression of "direct address."

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

North Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
nom.

Ablative, the Latin case of adverbial relation, typically expressing the notion "away from," or the source or place of an action.
acc.

It's rare in English, but examples would be tom-tom and chitchat.
refl.

No university had seen fit to shackle its graduate students to the cyber-mill, grinding out an online etymology dictionary.

The archaic Heaven forfend would be an example of optative, though unlike some I.E. languages English has no specific markers for this case.
orig.

-Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to "El otro, el mismo."

Diminutive, a form of a word used to express smallness, as ringlet is the dim. of ring.
dissimilation Process by which a word with a repeated sound changes one of the two; Latin peregrinus became Fr. pelerin ("pilgrim") by dissimilation.

East Frisian, variant of Frisian spoke on the islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
e.g. abbreviation of L. exempli gratia "for the sake of example."

Genitive, the case of the complement, typically expressing "possession" or "origin."

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

Sources
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Intransitive, of verbs, not taking a direct object.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Modern Greek, language of Greece since c.1500.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

Lithuanian, the Baltic language spoken in Lithuania.

Oscan, the Italic language of the Samnites in middle and southern Italy in pre-Roman times.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Oscan, the Italic language of the Samnites in middle and southern Italy in pre-Roman times.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

It's rare in English, but examples would be tom-tom and chitchat.
refl.

Mercian The Anglian dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
metathesis Inversion of segments within a word; Old English þridda became Modern English third through metathesis of -r- and -i.

I’ve tried to weed out the bad seeds they left in this work.

("John hurt himself" is a reflexive sentence.)
rhotacism The tendency in spoken language for "r" to take the place of other sounds, especially "s/z."

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

Old Church Slavonic, the earliest attested Slavic language, known from 9c.

Turkish, Turkic (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Turkey.
ult.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

Influenced
instrumental, case encoding the notion "means by which x is done."
intens.

Frankish, West Germanic language of the Franks, inhabitants of northern Gaul 5c.-6c., their descendants ruled France, Germany, Italy in 9c., and the language had strong influence on French.
freq.

Uncertain
Urdu Language of the Muslim conquerors of India; Hindi with a large admixture of Arabic and Persian.

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Ablative, the Latin case of adverbial relation, typically expressing the notion "away from," or the source or place of an action.
acc.

Nominative, the case that typically codes the grammatical function of the subject.

Semitic, major subgroup of Afroasiatic language family, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

Used by the Slavs of Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Klein, Rabbi of Nové Zámky in Czechoslovakia from 1931-44, was deported to Dachau and returned home after liberation to find "that my father, my wife, my only child Joseph, and two of my three sisters had suffered martyrdom in Auschwitz."

Present tense
pres.-pret.

The OED's editors and stringers are constantly revising and updating their text.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Old Irish, the Irish language as written and spoken from earliest times to 11c.

Ablative, the Latin case of adverbial relation, typically expressing the notion "away from," or the source or place of an action.
acc.

Subject, the noun or pronoun about which something is said in the predicate of a sentence.
subjunctive The mood typically denoting notions like unreality, doubt.
superl. superlative, the third degree of comparison of an adjective or adverb.

Phoenician, the extinct Semitic language of the Phoenicians, closely related to Hebrew.

B.C.E.
asterisk (*) Words beginning with an asterisk are not attested in any written source, but they have been reconstructed by etymological analysis, such as Indo-European *ped-, the root of words for "foot" in most of its daughter tongues.
back formation The process by which an apparently complex word is erroneously split up and a new, simple form produced from it (burgle is a back formation of burglar).
c.

It's rare in English, but examples would be tom-tom and chitchat.
refl.

Goth.

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

Russ.

Old Italian, the Italian language as written and spoken before 16c.

Frisian, West Germanic language spoken in Friesland, the lowland coast of the North Sea and nearby islands, closely related to Dutch and Old English.
fut.

You can see a family tree of the W.Gmc. languages here.

Uncertain
Urdu Language of the Muslim conquerors of India; Hindi with a large admixture of Arabic and Persian.

To compile an entry, I look up the word in my major sources: the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition), the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (1988), Weekley’s "Etymological Dictionary of Modern English" (1921), and Ernest Klein's “Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (1971).

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

Northumbrian The Anglian dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.

No university had seen fit to shackle its graduate students to the cyber-mill, grinding out an online etymology dictionary.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Caxton William Caxton (d.1491), the first English printer, responsible for a number of spelling changes.

Gallo-Romance or Gallo-Roman, the vernacular language of France c. 500-900 C.E.; intermediate between Vulgar Latin and Old French.

Gallo-Romance or Gallo-Roman, the vernacular language of France c. 500-900 C.E.; intermediate between Vulgar Latin and Old French.

And for navigating the back alleys of English I had as a lantern the always delightful "Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence.

In many cases my want of education in this field has led me astray in understanding or interpreting the sources, and in others I’ve simply bungled my notes, or typed things amiss.

Ancient Greek formed its perfect tenses by reduplication: leipo "I leave," le-loipa "I have left."

Hungarian, Finno-Ugric (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Hungary; Magyar.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Anglo-French, the French written in England from the Norman Conquest (1066) through the Middle Ages; the administrative and legal language of England 12c.-17c.

Whatever indignation they might feel at my trespass on their demesne, they appreciate the usefulness of a free, ready online resource and have contributed much to make it better than I could.

West Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising English, Dutch, German, Yiddish, Frisian, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.

This project began after I looked for a free dictionary of word origins online and found none.

The OED's editors and stringers are constantly revising and updating their text.

North Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
nom.

Frisian, West Germanic language spoken in Friesland, the lowland coast of the North Sea and nearby islands, closely related to Dutch and Old English.
fut.

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

Old North French, the dialect of northern France before the 1500s, especially that of coastal Normandy and Picardy.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

Adverb
agent noun A form expressing the notion "doer of action."

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

Gael.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

DAS "Dictionary of American Slang," by Harold Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, published 1960, revised four times since.
dat.

Neuter, the third grammatical gender in highly inflected Indo-European languages.

Kentish The dialect of Old English spoken by the Jutes who formed the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent.

Celt.

North Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
nom.

But the tyranny of search engines has tended to turn me into a “splitter.”

B.C.E.
asterisk (*) Words beginning with an asterisk are not attested in any written source, but they have been reconstructed by etymological analysis, such as Indo-European *ped-, the root of words for "foot" in most of its daughter tongues.
back formation The process by which an apparently complex word is erroneously split up and a new, simple form produced from it (burgle is a back formation of burglar).
c.

Armenian, the Indo-European language of Armenia.

Eccles.

Classical Hebrew, ancient Semitic language of the Israelites.

Fris.

West African, languages of the Guinea coast and inland regions of Africa, the principal source of slaves for the European colonies in the New World.

In Middle English, this site generally makes use of the dates in the Barnhart dictionary, whose compilers gave especial attention to this period, and the online version of the University of Michigan's exhaustive Middle English Dictionary.

W.Saxon West Saxon, the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex.

The OED's editors and stringers are constantly revising and updating their text.

Official standard language of the former Yugoslavia.

Frankish, West Germanic language of the Franks, inhabitants of northern Gaul 5c.-6c., their descendants ruled France, Germany, Italy in 9c., and the language had strong influence on French.
freq.

Verb
var.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

B.C.E.
asterisk (*) Words beginning with an asterisk are not attested in any written source, but they have been reconstructed by etymological analysis, such as Indo-European *ped-, the root of words for "foot" in most of its daughter tongues.
back formation The process by which an apparently complex word is erroneously split up and a new, simple form produced from it (burgle is a back formation of burglar).
c.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

The archaic Heaven forfend would be an example of optative, though unlike some I.E. languages English has no specific markers for this case.
orig.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

Iranian, the branch of Indo-European languages spoken on and around the plateau of Iran, including modern Farsi and Kurdish.
irreg.

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This work is dedicated to all those who seek the old paths,
the well-worn, unpaved hill-ways;
and especially to those who honor the elder teachers;
and in particular to one priestess.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

Uncertain
Urdu Language of the Muslim conquerors of India; Hindi with a large admixture of Arabic and Persian.

Subject, the noun or pronoun about which something is said in the predicate of a sentence.
subjunctive The mood typically denoting notions like unreality, doubt.
superl. superlative, the third degree of comparison of an adjective or adverb.

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

Scandinavian, also known as North Germanic, sub-group of Germanic spoken in Scandinavia consisting of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish.

All are presumed to share a common ancestor, PIE.
imitative "a convenient term to include onomatopoeic and echoic" [Weekley].
imper.

In Middle English, this site generally makes use of the dates in the Barnhart dictionary, whose compilers gave especial attention to this period, and the online version of the University of Michigan's exhaustive Middle English Dictionary.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

Lithuanian, the Baltic language spoken in Lithuania.

Serb.

Wolof Niger-Congo language of Senegal and Gambia.

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

Old Church Slavonic, the earliest attested Slavic language, known from 9c.

Spanish, also known as Castilian, Romanic language spoken in Spain and Spanish America.
subj.

Assyrian, Akkadian dialect spoken in the empire that flourished on the Tigris River 7c.

Anglo-French, the French written in England from the Norman Conquest (1066) through the Middle Ages; the administrative and legal language of England 12c.-17c.

Diminutive, a form of a word used to express smallness, as ringlet is the dim. of ring.
dissimilation Process by which a word with a repeated sound changes one of the two; Latin peregrinus became Fr. pelerin ("pilgrim") by dissimilation.

The next step was to take the draft entry to my secondary shelf of sources: principally dictionaries of Old English, Middle English, Latin, Greek, French, and etymology dictionaries for French (Gamillscheg), German (Kluge) and Latin (Tucker).

North Germanic, the subgroup of Germanic comprising Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.; also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
nom.

In old Germanic languages, the "fourth case," catch-all for I.E. dative, ablative, locative and other cases.
deriv.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

Verb
var.

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

Italian, the Romanic language spoken in Italy, it evolved out of the Tuscan dialect in the Renaissance.
iterative marking repetition; generally identical with frequentative.

Old Persian, the Persian language as written and spoken from 7c.

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

French past participles commonly were adopted as finite verbs in Middle English.
prep.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

Old Norse, the Norwegian language as written and spoken c.100 to 1500 C.E., the relevant phase of it being "Viking Norse" (700-1100), the language spoken by the invaders and colonizers of northern and eastern England c.875-950.

North Sea Gmc. the closely related languages of the Germanic tribes along the coastal and lowland regions of the North Sea coast of continental Europe before the period of the Anglo-Saxon migration, comprising Old Low Franconian, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old English.

In many cases my want of education in this field has led me astray in understanding or interpreting the sources, and in others I’ve simply bungled my notes, or typed things amiss.

Old High German, the ancestor of the modern literary German language, spoken in the upland regions of Germany; German language as written and spoken from the earliest period to c.1100.

This project began after I looked for a free dictionary of word origins online and found none.

Anglo-French, the French written in England from the Norman Conquest (1066) through the Middle Ages; the administrative and legal language of England 12c.-17c.

For slang and colloquial usage, I consult the Kipfer/Chapman "Dictionary of American Slang" (which despite its title embraces many Britishisms), DARE, and Farmer.

Pol.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

Klein, Rabbi of Nové Zámky in Czechoslovakia from 1931-44, was deported to Dachau and returned home after liberation to find "that my father, my wife, my only child Joseph, and two of my three sisters had suffered martyrdom in Auschwitz."

Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
adj.

Iranian, the branch of Indo-European languages spoken on and around the plateau of Iran, including modern Farsi and Kurdish.
irreg.

The availability of Internet newsgroups archives -- again, used judiciously -- is a convenient way to find rough early dates for the most contemporary words.

Danish, North Germanic language spoken in Denmark.

Periodically, using Internet technology, I have acquired lists of words people have searched for in this site that do not have headword entries, and researched the words and added them to the text.

Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
adj.

Sanskrit, the classical Indian literary language from 4c.

Gerund, a verbal noun, in English usually ending in -ing.

Combining, the form of a word when it combines with other words.
comp.

Lithuanian, the Baltic language spoken in Lithuania.

Classical Hebrew, ancient Semitic language of the Israelites.

The recent availability of newspaper and magazine archives in computer files, and the flood of material presented in the searchable Google books project, opens a vast field for careful research -- careful because the Google publications too often are misdated on the Google introduction pages.

Wolof Niger-Congo language of Senegal and Gambia.

Klein, Rabbi of Nové Zámky in Czechoslovakia from 1931-44, was deported to Dachau and returned home after liberation to find "that my father, my wife, my only child Joseph, and two of my three sisters had suffered martyrdom in Auschwitz."

Hungarian, Finno-Ugric (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Hungary; Magyar.

Serbian, eastern variant of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, generally written in Cyrillic.

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

And I know so much more useless trivia than I did when I started (applaud is related to explode; three people can have a dialogue; and if anyone calls you feisty, slug him).

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

Wolof Niger-Congo language of Senegal and Gambia.

Old Norse, the Norwegian language as written and spoken c.100 to 1500 C.E., the relevant phase of it being "Viking Norse" (700-1100), the language spoken by the invaders and colonizers of northern and eastern England c.875-950.

Polish, West Slavic language spoken in Poland.

New Testament.
obj.

Arabic, the Semitic language of the Arabs and the language of Islam.

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

The first step was to draw up a list of English words out of an ordinary dictionary, and to go seek their etymologies.

Assyrian, Akkadian dialect spoken in the empire that flourished on the Tigris River 7c.

There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their supposed sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Modern Latin, Latin language in use since c.1500, chiefly scientific.
n.

Anglo-French, the French written in England from the Norman Conquest (1066) through the Middle Ages; the administrative and legal language of England 12c.-17c.

Flemish, West Germanic dialect spoken in Flanders, generally regarded as the Belgian variant of Dutch rather than as a separate tongue.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

West African, languages of the Guinea coast and inland regions of Africa, the principal source of slaves for the European colonies in the New World.

The time scale is much debated, but the most recent date proposed for it is about 5,500 years ago.
pl.

Future, the verb tense indicating time to come.

Armenian, the Indo-European language of Armenia.

Classical Hebrew, ancient Semitic language of the Israelites.

Wolof Niger-Congo language of Senegal and Gambia.

Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
adj.

Armenian, the Indo-European language of Armenia.

And I know so much more useless trivia than I did when I started (applaud is related to explode; three people can have a dialogue; and if anyone calls you feisty, slug him).

Ablative, the Latin case of adverbial relation, typically expressing the notion "away from," or the source or place of an action.
acc.

For slang and colloquial usage, I consult the Kipfer/Chapman "Dictionary of American Slang" (which despite its title embraces many Britishisms), DARE, and Farmer.

Flemish, West Germanic dialect spoken in Flanders, generally regarded as the Belgian variant of Dutch rather than as a separate tongue.

DAS "Dictionary of American Slang," by Harold Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, published 1960, revised four times since.
dat.

The next step was to take the draft entry to my secondary shelf of sources: principally dictionaries of Old English, Middle English, Latin, Greek, French, and etymology dictionaries for French (Gamillscheg), German (Kluge) and Latin (Tucker).

Celtic, Indo-European language branch that includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.

Derived
dial.

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

Used by the Slavs of Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Great care has been taken and it's as accurate as I can make it.

Imperative, the verbal category expressing commands or orders.
imperfect Tense/aspect category indicating progressive aspect: I was saying is in the "past imperfect" tense.

This project began after I looked for a free dictionary of word origins online and found none.

Iran.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This work is dedicated to all those who seek the old paths,
the well-worn, unpaved hill-ways;
and especially to those who honor the elder teachers;
and in particular to one priestess.

Scot.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

In English it long ago merged with the nominative.

There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their supposed sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies.

This was before the rapid divergence of West Norse (Norway and the colonies) and East Norse (Denmark and Sweden), so the language of the vikings in England was essentially the same, whether they came from Denmark or from Norway.

Combining, the form of a word when it combines with other words.
comp.

Anglian The Old English dialect of the Angles; the dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

Gaelic, Celtic language of Highland Scotland.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

OED "Oxford English Dictionary," the principal source for modern English etymologies, begun in 1879 (as the "New English Dictionary"); a second edition was published in the 1980s and the work is ongoing.

This was before the rapid divergence of West Norse (Norway and the colonies) and East Norse (Denmark and Sweden), so the language of the vikings in England was essentially the same, whether they came from Denmark or from Norway.

The roots of language are irrational and of a
magical nature."

Chemical
cognate Having the same ancestor.
comb.

Hunter is an agent noun, and -er is an agentive suffix.
alt.

Used by the Slavs of Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Scandinavian, also known as North Germanic, sub-group of Germanic spoken in Scandinavia consisting of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish.

Whatever indignation they might feel at my trespass on their demesne, they appreciate the usefulness of a free, ready online resource and have contributed much to make it better than I could.

Gaelic, Celtic language of Highland Scotland.

But the tyranny of search engines has tended to turn me into a “splitter.”

Turk.

Old Testament
part.

Ecclesiastical; usually in reference to Greek as used by the early Christians.
echoic A word that sounds like what it means.

But there was no comprehensive public dictionary of the histories of words we use every day -- words like the and day.

I’ve tried to weed out the bad seeds they left in this work.

No university had seen fit to shackle its graduate students to the cyber-mill, grinding out an online etymology dictionary.

Also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
cf. abbreviation of L. confer "compare."

Hungarian, Finno-Ugric (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Hungary; Magyar.

The roots of language are irrational and of a
magical nature."

Italian, the Romanic language spoken in Italy, it evolved out of the Tuscan dialect in the Renaissance.
iterative marking repetition; generally identical with frequentative.

Among its dialects were Ionian-Attic (the language of Homer and the Athenian dramatists), Aeolic (used in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos), and Dorian (the language of Sparta).

Arabic, the Semitic language of the Arabs and the language of Islam.

The first step was to draw up a list of English words out of an ordinary dictionary, and to go seek their etymologies.

East Frisian, variant of Frisian spoke on the islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
e.g. abbreviation of L. exempli gratia "for the sake of example."

Search: Search ModeNatural LanguageFind single termFind any termFind exact phrase

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"It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial
repositories, put together well after the languages they
define.

Dutch, West Germanic language spoke in the Netherlands, descended from the Low German dialects of the Franks and Saxons.

Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
adj.

Frankish, West Germanic language of the Franks, inhabitants of northern Gaul 5c.-6c., their descendants ruled France, Germany, Italy in 9c., and the language had strong influence on French.
freq.

Caxton William Caxton (d.1491), the first English printer, responsible for a number of spelling changes.

Caxton William Caxton (d.1491), the first English printer, responsible for a number of spelling changes.

Flemish, West Germanic dialect spoken in Flanders, generally regarded as the Belgian variant of Dutch rather than as a separate tongue.

There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their supposed sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies.

Ecclesiastical; usually in reference to Greek as used by the early Christians.
echoic A word that sounds like what it means.

New Testament.
obj.

Portuguese, Romanic language spoken chiefly in Portugal and Brazil.
poss.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

East Frisian, variant of Frisian spoke on the islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
e.g. abbreviation of L. exempli gratia "for the sake of example."

Person, the form a verb takes in indicating whether it refers to the person speaking, the person spoken to, or the person or thing spoken about.

Person, the form a verb takes in indicating whether it refers to the person speaking, the person spoken to, or the person or thing spoken about.

The recent availability of newspaper and magazine archives in computer files, and the flood of material presented in the searchable Google books project, opens a vast field for careful research -- careful because the Google publications too often are misdated on the Google introduction pages.

Uncertain
Urdu Language of the Muslim conquerors of India; Hindi with a large admixture of Arabic and Persian.

DAS "Dictionary of American Slang," by Harold Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, published 1960, revised four times since.
dat.

Flemish, West Germanic dialect spoken in Flanders, generally regarded as the Belgian variant of Dutch rather than as a separate tongue.

Especially
etc.

From these I attempted to flesh out the entries and give them some nuance and answer some questions I had about words that the “big books” did not notice.

Modern English, language of Britain and British America since mid-16c.

Turkish, Turkic (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Turkey.
ult.

In Modern English, it commonly ends in -ed or -en.

Old Prussian, a West Baltic language similar to Lithuanian, extinct since 17c.
optative A mood expressing wishing.

In a few cases, they differed significantly in their derivations.

Uncertain
Urdu Language of the Muslim conquerors of India; Hindi with a large admixture of Arabic and Persian.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

Sources
Links
© 2001-2012 Douglas Harper
Custom logo design by LogoBee.com
Page design and coding by Dan McCormack
Sponsored Words

Indo-European, the family of languages that includes most of the languages of modern Europe (English among them) and some current and extinct ones in western and southern Asia.

Longest is the superlative of long.

French, Romanic language spoken cheifly in France.

To compile an entry, I look up the word in my major sources: the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition), the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (1988), Weekley’s "Etymological Dictionary of Modern English" (1921), and Ernest Klein's “Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (1971).

West African, languages of the Guinea coast and inland regions of Africa, the principal source of slaves for the European colonies in the New World.

Originally
O.S.

Old Norse, the Norwegian language as written and spoken c.100 to 1500 C.E., the relevant phase of it being "Viking Norse" (700-1100), the language spoken by the invaders and colonizers of northern and eastern England c.875-950.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

Hungarian, Finno-Ugric (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Hungary; Magyar.

Frisian, West Germanic language spoken in Friesland, the lowland coast of the North Sea and nearby islands, closely related to Dutch and Old English.
fut.

My tendency at first was to “clump” the words -- have, say, sleep, sleeper, sleepwalking, sleepy, slept all under one head.

Feminine, the grammatical gender in highly inflected I.E. languages that denotes females and many other words to which no distinction of sex is apparent.

The next step was to take the draft entry to my secondary shelf of sources: principally dictionaries of Old English, Middle English, Latin, Greek, French, and etymology dictionaries for French (Gamillscheg), German (Kluge) and Latin (Tucker).

Greek, Indo-European language spoken in Greece in the classical period, c. 8c.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

Frisian, West Germanic language spoken in Friesland, the lowland coast of the North Sea and nearby islands, closely related to Dutch and Old English.
fut.

Ecclesiastical; usually in reference to Greek as used by the early Christians.
echoic A word that sounds like what it means.

Sources
Links
© 2001-2012 Douglas Harper
Custom logo design by LogoBee.com
Page design and coding by Dan McCormack
Sponsored Words

Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
adj.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

I also did this to increase my understanding of the language, and its ancestors and relatives.

Frankish, West Germanic language of the Franks, inhabitants of northern Gaul 5c.-6c., their descendants ruled France, Germany, Italy in 9c., and the language had strong influence on French.
freq.

Past participle, a form of a verb that can be both a verb and an adjective, and which denotes action which has been completed.

[As of January 2004, OED Online is now available by annual subscription to individuals for $295 a year, and has recently introduced monthly subscriptions for $29.95.]

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

Gallo-Romance or Gallo-Roman, the vernacular language of France c. 500-900 C.E.; intermediate between Vulgar Latin and Old French.

I’ve erred on the side of inclusion.

Anglo-French, the French written in England from the Norman Conquest (1066) through the Middle Ages; the administrative and legal language of England 12c.-17c.

Kentish The dialect of Old English spoken by the Jutes who formed the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent.

In other words, "see this entry for more information."
chem.

DAS "Dictionary of American Slang," by Harold Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, published 1960, revised four times since.
dat.

Anglo-L. Anglo-Latin, the form of Medieval Latin used in England during the Middle English period.

No university had seen fit to shackle its graduate students to the cyber-mill, grinding out an online etymology dictionary.

Gaulish, Celtic language of ancient Gaul.
gen.

Portuguese, Romanic language spoken chiefly in Portugal and Brazil.
poss.

Imperative, the verbal category expressing commands or orders.
imperfect Tense/aspect category indicating progressive aspect: I was saying is in the "past imperfect" tense.

In Modern English, most easily identified by its characteristic ending -ing.

Egypt.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

German, West Germanic language spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, technically "New High German."
ger.

Indo-European, the family of languages that includes most of the languages of modern Europe (English among them) and some current and extinct ones in western and southern Asia.

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

Polish, West Slavic language spoken in Poland.

I would be content to leave them as such, but readers are curious to know what guesses have been made (or dismissed) by the experts, as well as what facts have been settled.

Feminine, the grammatical gender in highly inflected I.E. languages that denotes females and many other words to which no distinction of sex is apparent.

East Frisian, variant of Frisian spoke on the islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
e.g. abbreviation of L. exempli gratia "for the sake of example."

The OED is a monumental work, rightly revered, but a suspicion arises that there might be more to the language than what is in it.

In Middle English, this site generally makes use of the dates in the Barnhart dictionary, whose compilers gave especial attention to this period, and the online version of the University of Michigan's exhaustive Middle English Dictionary.

DAS "Dictionary of American Slang," by Harold Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, published 1960, revised four times since.
dat.

There were message boards where you could submit a question and wait a few days or weeks for an expert to answer.

Portuguese, Romanic language spoken chiefly in Portugal and Brazil.
poss.

Old Prussian, a West Baltic language similar to Lithuanian, extinct since 17c.
optative A mood expressing wishing.

Turkish, Turkic (non-Indo-European) language spoken in Turkey.
ult.

In most cases, all of these offered substantially the same derivations.

Persian, also known as Farsi, modern Iranian language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan.
pers.

Especially
etc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This work is dedicated to all those who seek the old paths,
the well-worn, unpaved hill-ways;
and especially to those who honor the elder teachers;
and in particular to one priestess.

Gallo-Romance or Gallo-Roman, the vernacular language of France c. 500-900 C.E.; intermediate between Vulgar Latin and Old French.

Mexican Spanish, Spanish as spoken in Mexico.

Russian, East Slavic language of Russia.

Also the language spoken by the ancestral group during the presumed period of unity.
cf. abbreviation of L. confer "compare."

The recent availability of newspaper and magazine archives in computer files, and the flood of material presented in the searchable Google books project, opens a vast field for careful research -- careful because the Google publications too often are misdated on the Google introduction pages.

Egyptian, Afroasiatic (Hamitic) language spoken in ancient Egypt.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

[As of January 2004, OED Online is now available by annual subscription to individuals for $295 a year, and has recently introduced monthly subscriptions for $29.95.]

I would be content to leave them as such, but readers are curious to know what guesses have been made (or dismissed) by the experts, as well as what facts have been settled.

Think of it as looking at pictures of your friends' parents when they were your age.

Klein, Rabbi of Nové Zámky in Czechoslovakia from 1931-44, was deported to Dachau and returned home after liberation to find "that my father, my wife, my only child Joseph, and two of my three sisters had suffered martyrdom in Auschwitz."

"The tree was struck by lightning" is a passive construction.
perf.

Frankish, West Germanic language of the Franks, inhabitants of northern Gaul 5c.-6c., their descendants ruled France, Germany, Italy in 9c., and the language had strong influence on French.
freq.

I would be content to leave them as such, but readers are curious to know what guesses have been made (or dismissed) by the experts, as well as what facts have been settled.

L. Classical Latin, the Italic language of ancient Rome until about 4c.
lit.

[As of January 2004, OED Online is now available by annual subscription to individuals for $295 a year, and has recently introduced monthly subscriptions for $29.95.]

"

This dictionary gets bigger almost every day.

This project began after I looked for a free dictionary of word origins online and found none.

Caxton William Caxton (d.1491), the first English printer, responsible for a number of spelling changes.

Sources
Links
© 2001-2012 Douglas Harper
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German, West Germanic language spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, technically "New High German."
ger.

Arabic, the Semitic language of the Arabs and the language of Islam.

But users wrote to me seeking them, so I’ve added them to the best of my ability, mainly based on the Watkins “American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots” but also by consulting Pokorny.

Thus, asked is the past participle of ask.

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"It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial
repositories, put together well after the languages they
define.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

In some cases they offered variations on the path a word took through Latin and French to English.

One was so deadly it became the only book I’ve ever destroyed as a menace to society.

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

The archaic Heaven forfend would be an example of optative, though unlike some I.E. languages English has no specific markers for this case.
orig.

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© 2001-2012 Douglas Harper
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Page design and coding by Dan McCormack
Sponsored Words

I’ve tried to indicate that in this work.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Originally I did not intend to include Proto-Indo-European roots, in part because there was such wide disagreement among the sources I consulted, in part because the whole field seems so speculative.

In English it long ago merged with the nominative.

The bulk of the 19th and 20th century dates in this work have been found, or confirmed, in such sources.

(Where possible, I've tried to indicate that.)

The archaic Heaven forfend would be an example of optative, though unlike some I.E. languages English has no specific markers for this case.
orig.

(Where possible, I've tried to indicate that.)

West African, languages of the Guinea coast and inland regions of Africa, the principal source of slaves for the European colonies in the New World.

Mercian The Anglian dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
metathesis Inversion of segments within a word; Old English þridda became Modern English third through metathesis of -r- and -i.

This project began after I looked for a free dictionary of word origins online and found none.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

German, West Germanic language spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, technically "New High German."
ger.

These are histories of words only, not things or ideas.

People will continue to use words as they will, finding wider meanings for old words and coining new ones to fit new situations.

Century, when following a number (16c.); circa when preceding one (c.1500).
caus.

Masculine, the grammatical gender in highly inflected Indo-European languages that denotes males and used with many other words to which no distinction of sex is apparent.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

As a writer and editor with an amateur's passion for linguistics, I took this as a joy ride more than drudgery.

There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their supposed sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies.

Hung.

Diminutive, a form of a word used to express smallness, as ringlet is the dim. of ring.
dissimilation Process by which a word with a repeated sound changes one of the two; Latin peregrinus became Fr. pelerin ("pilgrim") by dissimilation.

And for navigating the back alleys of English I had as a lantern the always delightful "Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

To eat is non-perfective; to eat up is perfective.

Some people seem to regard that also as a disqualifier.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their supposed sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies.

I-mutation, also known as "i-umlaut."
inceptive see inchoative.
inchoative Aspect expressing the notion "entering into an action, beginning."

Indo-European, the family of languages that includes most of the languages of modern Europe (English among them) and some current and extinct ones in western and southern Asia.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This work is dedicated to all those who seek the old paths,
the well-worn, unpaved hill-ways;
and especially to those who honor the elder teachers;
and in particular to one priestess.

Vulgar Latin, the everyday speech of the Roman people, as opposed to literary Latin.
voc.

Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Anglo-French spoken by the Norman settlers (French-speaking descendants of Scandinavians who settled in Normandy in the 9c.) in England after the Conquest (1066).

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

Indo-European, the family of languages that includes most of the languages of modern Europe (English among them) and some current and extinct ones in western and southern Asia.

People will continue to use words as they will, finding wider meanings for old words and coining new ones to fit new situations.

Caxton William Caxton (d.1491), the first English printer, responsible for a number of spelling changes.

In other words, "see this entry for more information."
chem.

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

From these I attempted to flesh out the entries and give them some nuance and answer some questions I had about words that the “big books” did not notice.

Loan-translation, a literal piece-by piece translation from one language to another.

There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their supposed sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies.

English, West Germanic language spoken in England after c.450, heavily influenced by French and somewhat by Scandinavian.
esp.

Serbo-Croatian, South Slavic language or group of dialects spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

The first step was to draw up a list of English words out of an ordinary dictionary, and to go seek their etymologies.

Gerund, a verbal noun, in English usually ending in -ing.

Present-preterite, a group of Germanic verbs (mostly auxiliaries such as may, shall, can) whose original pt. forms split off and became separate pres. tense verbs (might, should, could).
pret.

Comparative, the second degree of comparison of an adjective or adverb.

Properly
Prov.

Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant 600 or 2,000 years ago.

Latin flos "flower" has genitive floris, an instance of rhotacism.

At the start, I made use of a couple of books which seemed authoritative but eventually revealed themselves to be whimsical or worse.

So I’ve included such speculations that have appeared in the sources I consulted.

DAS "Dictionary of American Slang," by Harold Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, published 1960, revised four times since.
dat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This work is dedicated to all those who seek the old paths,
the well-worn, unpaved hill-ways;
and especially to those who honor the elder teachers;
and in particular to one priestess.

Think of it as looking at pictures of your friends' parents when they were your age.

The modern word for something might have replaced old, forgotten words for the same object or concept.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This work is dedicated to all those who seek the old paths,
the well-worn, unpaved hill-ways;
and especially to those who honor the elder teachers;
and in particular to one priestess.

And I know so much more useless trivia than I did when I started (applaud is related to explode; three people can have a dialogue; and if anyone calls you feisty, slug him).

But users wrote to me seeking them, so I’ve added them to the best of my ability, mainly based on the Watkins “American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots” but also by consulting Pokorny.

Italian, the Romanic language spoken in Italy, it evolved out of the Tuscan dialect in the Renaissance.
iterative marking repetition; generally identical with frequentative.

Accusative, typically the case of the direct object, but also sometimes denoting "motion towards."

Mexican Spanish, Spanish as spoken in Mexico.

More than 90 percent of it was from Vulgar Latin, with a smattering of Celtic and Germanic, plus some M.L. learned terms.

American English, the English language as spoken and written in the United States of America.

Essentially the same as Anglo-French.
aphetic Alteration of a word by loss of a short, unaccented vowel at the beginning (such as squire from esquire).

This project began after I looked for a free dictionary of word origins online and found none.

My tendency at first was to “clump” the words -- have, say, sleep, sleeper, sleepwalking, sleepy, slept all under one head.

The OED's editors and stringers are constantly revising and updating their text.

One was so deadly it became the only book I’ve ever destroyed as a menace to society.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

For the 19th and 20th centuries, the OED print edition's inattention to American sources begins to tell: As recently as the 2001 printing of the hardcover 2nd edition, there was no entry for a good American word like "bloviate," "dribble" was recognized as a term in soccer but not in basketball, and the earliest citation for Dixieland music was from "Punch."

And I know so much more useless trivia than I did when I started (applaud is related to explode; three people can have a dialogue; and if anyone calls you feisty, slug him).

And I know so much more useless trivia than I did when I started (applaud is related to explode; three people can have a dialogue; and if anyone calls you feisty, slug him).

You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year.

He moved to Canada, and out of his sorrow and urged on by his surviving sister he set down his lifelong love of etymology into a book, and in its introduction he wrote:

May this dictionary, which plastically shows the affinity and interrelationship of the nations of the world in the way in which their languages developed, contribute to bringing them nearer to one another in the sincere pursuit of peace on earth -- which was one of my cardinal aims in writing this dictionary.

Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Germanic language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

As a writer and editor with an amateur's passion for linguistics, I took this as a joy ride more than drudgery.

Klein, Rabbi of Nové Zámky in Czechoslovakia from 1931-44, was deported to Dachau and returned home after liberation to find "that my father, my wife, my only child Joseph, and two of my three sisters had suffered martyrdom in Auschwitz."

German, West Germanic language spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, technically "New High German."
ger.

Think of it as looking at pictures of your friends' parents when they were your age.