English dictionary, thesaurus, translations & etymology

Etymology — The origins of English words

Where do words come from? Trace the origin and history of any English word, from its Latin, Greek or Old English roots through to its modern meaning. Every etymology is sourced.

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Borrowed directly from Japanese 味噌 (miso).

From Anglo-Norman enheritaunce, related to "inherit."

From scare + -ed.

From French irrégularité, from Medieval Latin irregularitas.

From urology + -ist.

From Old French "bracelet," a diminutive of "bras" ("arm").

From Afrikaans boer, "farmer," a doublet of the English words bauer, boor, and bower.

Named after Daiquirí, a beach and mining town on the south coast of Cuba, where the drink is said to have originated in the early 20th century.

From French diphtérie, coined in 1855 from Greek diphthéra ("leather" or "membrane"), referring to the tough membrane the disease forms in the throat.

From art + work — literally "work of art," first used for illustrations prepared for print.

From home + land.

From dead plus beat, first used for an exhausted person in the 1820s; the debt-dodger sense emerged around the American Civil War.

From "amplify" plus the agent suffix "-er" — literally "the thing that amplifies".

From Old English hæfen ("harbour, port"), related to German Hafen and Dutch haven, all pointing back to a Germanic word for the open sea.

From Old English bedreda, literally "one who rides in bed" — combining "bed" with an old word related to "rider."

From Middle French lustre, from Old Italian lustrare ("to brighten"), from Latin lustro ("to purify, to brighten").

Formed from hike plus the agent suffix -er.

Origin uncertain — likely a diminutive related to "dock" in the sense of a brief written label or summary.

From Old French cuevre-fu, literally "cover fire" — originally an evening signal for households to bank their hearth fires for the night.

From Latin stagnans, "forming standing water," from stagnum, a pool.

Probably of North Germanic origin, related to a Swedish dialect word for "wrinkle," and connected to the same root as shrink.

Originally a trademark, coined in the early 1970s as the acronym TSER (later TASER) after the fictional "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle"; the name has since become a generic term for any stun gun.

From un- + intentional.

From Late Latin sciatica, ultimately from Greek iskhiadikos, "of the hip," from iskhion, "hip."