"L" Word Origins

lexicon

Latin

Via Latin from Greek lexikon, short for lexikon biblion ("book of words"), from lexis ("word, speech").

Lexie

Origin

Diminutives + -ie.

Lexington

Origin

From Lexington, one of several predecessory forms of Laxton, A village in Laxton and Moorhouse parish, Newark and Sherwood district, Nottinghamshire, England (see Laxton for further etymology). Lexington, Massachusetts was the original municipality of that name in the United States. The town in Massachusetts may have been named either (1) after the eponymous village in Nottinghamshire, England, once called by Lexington and sundry other forms thereof, and today truncated to Laxton, or (2) after Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton (whose title refers to the place in Nottinghamshire today known as Laxton). The other US cities and towns called Lexington, beginning with Lexington, Kentucky, were named after the town in Massachusetts, the site of an important Revolutionary War battle.

Lexus

Origin · 1987

An invented brand name created around 1987 by a marketing team, chosen for how smoothly it sounds rather than for any specific meaning.

ley

Origin

A variant of the older word "lea," meaning open grassland or meadow.

Leyland

Origin

From layland ("fallow land").

Leyton

Old English

From the name of the River Lea + Old English tūn ("settlement, town").

LFG

English

An initialism; the first sense expands to an emphatic form of "let's go", the gaming sense to "looking for group".

LG

English

As a company name, LG comes from Lucky-Goldstar, the merged name of the Korean firms Lucky and Goldstar, which the group adopted in shortened form. As a size abbreviation, it is simply a clipping of large.

LGBT

Origin · 1980

An initialism for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender," which grew out of the earlier abbreviation LGB and has been in use since the late 1980s.

LGBTQIA

English

An initialism of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning), intersex, and asexual (or aromantic).

Lhasa

Origin

From Tibetan ལྷ་ས (lha sa), meaning roughly "place of the gods".

li

Chinese

From Chinese Mandarin li, romanizing two distinct native words — one for the unit of distance, another the philosophical term for ritual propriety.

liability

Latin

From "liable" + -ity, ultimately from Latin ligare ("to bind"), the same root that gives us "ligament" and "oblige."

liable

Latin

From Old French lier ("to bind"), from Latin ligare ("to bind, tie").

liaise

French

A back-formation from "liaison," itself from French liaison ("binding, connection").

liaison

Latin

From French liaison ("binding"), from Latin ligare ("to bind").

Liam

Irish

From Irish Liam, a clipped form of Uilliam, itself borrowed from English William.

Lian

Old Norse

* As a Norwegian surname, from several farmsteads with the name Li, from Old Norse hlíð (“hillside”). * As a Chinese surname, from 連 /连, 连, and 廉 (lián).

liana

French

From French liane, possibly influenced by lien ("link, bond").

liang

Chinese

From Mandarin Chinese liang, the standard romanization of a traditional weight-and-currency term.

liao

Chinese

From Hokkien and Teochew pronunciations of the Chinese character meaning "finished," influenced by the Mandarin reading.

Liaoxi

Origin

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin 遼西 /辽西 (Liáoxī).

liar

Old English

From Old English leogere ("liar, false witness"), from the same root as the verb "lie."

lib

Origin

A clipped form of words beginning with "lib-," most often "liberation," "liberal," or "library."

libation

Origin

From Latin lībātiō, from lībāre (“to take a little from anything, to taste, to pour out as an offering”).

libel

Latin

From Old French libelle, from Latin libellus, "little book" — originally just any short written document, long before it narrowed to mean a damaging false statement.

liberal

Latin · 1800

From Old French liberal, from Latin liberalis, "befitting a free person," from liber, "free." The political sense (someone favouring reform and personal liberty) only developed much later, in the 1800s.

liberalise

Origin

From liberal + -ise.

liberalism

French · 1818

From French libéralisme (around 1818), built from liberal plus the suffix -ism.

liberate

Latin

A learned borrowing from Latin liberatus, "set free," the past participle of libero, "to free" — ultimately from liber, "free." Not related to deliberate, despite the visual overlap.

liberation

Latin

From Middle French libération, from Latin liberatio, "a freeing" — built on liberate plus the noun suffix -ion.

liberator

Latin

From Latin liberator, "one who sets free," from liberare, "to free."

Liberia

Latin

From Latin liber, "free," plus the place-forming suffix -ia — the country's name literally means "land of the free."

libertarian

Origin · 1789

Built from liberty plus -arian ("a believer in"). First used in English in 1789 in a debate over free will, long before it took on its modern political meaning in the 20th century.

libertine

Latin

From Latin libertinus, "a freedman" (a former slave), from liber, "free." The word shifted from describing legal freedom to describing moral looseness.

liberty

Latin

From Old French liberté, from Latin libertas, "freedom," from liber, "free."

libidinous

Origin

From Middle English libidinous, borrowed from Latin libīdinōsus.

libido

Latin · 1900

A learned borrowing from Latin libido, "lust, desire," popularized in English through early 20th-century psychoanalysis, notably by Sigmund Freud.

Libra

Ancient Greek

From Latin libra, "scales, balance" — a calque of the Ancient Greek and, further back, Babylonian words for a set of weighing scales.

librarian

Origin · 1710

From library plus the agent-forming suffix -an; first recorded in English around 1710.

library

Latin

From Old French librairie, from Latin librarium, "bookcase," from liber, "book" (originally the inner bark of a tree, used as an early writing surface). Interestingly, the Romance-language descendants (French librairie, Italian libreria) came to mean "bookshop" instead — only English kept the "collection you borrow from" sense.

libre

Latin

Borrowed from French libre, "free, at liberty," from Latin liber, "free."

libretto

Origin

From Italian libretto, diminutive of libro (“book”), from Latin liber (“book”).

Libya

Ancient Greek · 1500

From Latin Libya, from Ancient Greek Libúē, in use in English since the 16th century.

Libyan

Origin · 1500

From Libya plus the suffix -an, in use since the 16th century.

liceity

Origin

From Latin licere.

license

Medieval Latin

From Middle English licencen, from Old French licencier, from Medieval Latin licentio.