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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From Old French fornais, from Latin fornax, meaning "oven" or "kiln."

Origin uncertain, first recorded in Middle English; possibly linked to an Old English word for "flow."

A shortened form of "influenza," itself borrowed from Italian.

From French parachute, combining para- ("protection against") and chute ("fall").

Formed from the phrasal verb "stand off," turned into a single noun.

Borrowed from Yiddish beygl, ultimately traced back to a Middle High German word meaning "ring" or "bracelet," which describes the bread's distinctive round shape.

From Latin effigies, "likeness," from effingere, "to fashion" or "portray."

The postal sense comes from Old French male ("bag, wallet"), from a Frankish word for a bag used to carry letters. The armor sense is unrelated, from Old French maille, ultimately from Latin macula ("mesh, spot").

From Latin tangens ("touching"), the present participle of tangere ("to touch").

From Latin sinus ("curve, fold, bosom"), which was actually a mistranslation — Arabic mathematicians used a word meaning "sine" that looked, unvowelled, like their word for "bosom," and Latin translators picked the wrong meaning.

From Arabic al-jabr ("reunion of broken parts"), taken from the title of a ninth-century mathematics text by al-Khwarizmi.

From Latin calculus, "small pebble," the same word used for counting stones on an abacus — mathematicians later borrowed it for this branch of math.

From French limonade, built from lemon plus the suffix -ade (as in orangeade).

From Greek phalanx, "battle order, line of soldiers" — later borrowed by anatomists for the similarly lined-up finger bones.

From Latin furtivus ("stolen, secret, hidden"), from furtum ("theft"), from fur ("thief").

From Latin nefarius, "wicked" — built from ne- ("not") and fas ("what is right in the eyes of the gods").

From "transcend" plus "-ent," or borrowed directly from Latin "transcendens."

From Greek aphasia, "speechlessness," from a- ("not") plus phasis ("speech").

From Latin operatio, "a working," from the verb operari — the same root as "operate."

From Middle English paire, via Old French from Latin paria, "equal things," related to par, "equal."

From Medieval Latin rectangulum, from Latin rectus ("right, straight") plus angulus ("angle").

From Old English rust, going back to a very old Germanic root meaning "red" — the same root that gives us the word "red" itself.

From volt + the noun-forming suffix -age, ultimately honoring Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery.

From Latin intersectio, from intersecare, "to cut between."