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 from Hindi dai, ultimately from Sanskrit.

Borrowed from Russian рубль (rublʹ).

From physics plus -ist; the term was coined by the English scholar William Whewell in the 1840s.

From high + tail, describing how fleeing animals such as deer raise their tails as they run away.

From Latin calamitas, meaning "damage" or "disaster."

From edge + -y, originally describing something sharply defined before it came to mean "tense" or "provocative."

From bullet + proof, "resistant to."

From French ravin ("a gully"), tracing back through Old French raviner ("to cascade down") to Latin rapina ("plunder"), the same root as "rapine."

Likely a rhyming repetition based on hum, dating to the 1500s.

Borrowed from German "plündern" (to loot), recorded in English use from the era of the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War.

From Old English flaxe and Medieval Latin flasco, both going back to a Germanic word for a wicker-covered bottle. Related to "fiasco" and "flagon."

From Old English middæg, a straightforward compound of "mid-" (middle) and "day."

From Old French variant, the present participle of Latin variare, "to change." First recorded in English around 1380.

From a Middle English word for a wall of locked shields formed by soldiers, going back to Old English scyldtruma — literally a "shield-troop." The military sense of a protective barrier eventually broadened into the everyday meaning of any place offering cover or safety.

From Japanese sushi, originally referring to the vinegared, "soured" rice rather than the fish itself.

From Japanese sashimi, literally "pierced body" or "sliced flesh," describing the way the fish is carefully cut into slices.

From "bed" plus "room."

From patron plus -ize.

From "Gene(s)," an old English name for Genoa, where a similar coarse cotton fabric originated; the final "-s" was later reinterpreted as a plural ending once the word came to describe trousers.

A compound of "law" and "suit."

Borrowed from Danish Arvid, Swedish Arvid or Norwegian Arvid.

From "biography" plus the agent suffix "-er" — literally, one who writes biography.

Ancient Greek · 1700

From Ancient Greek tonikos, from tonos ("tension, pitch") — 18th-century doctors linked healthy muscle "tension" to overall vigor, giving us the medical sense.

From Yiddish shlepn ("to drag"), from Middle High German slepen.