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 English coren, the past participle of ċēosan ("to choose"), later reshaped to match the verb choose.

From Middle French chose, from Latin causa (“cause, reason”). Doublet of cause.

From Old English ċēosan ("to choose, select, test"), from a very old Indo-European root meaning "to taste or try."

From Anglo-Norman cachier, a variant of Old French chacier — the same root that gave English "chase."

From Middle English bought, bowght, bouȝt, *buȝt, probably an alteration of bight, biȝt, byȝt (“bend, bight”) after bowen, buwen, buȝen (“to bow, bend”). Cognate with Scots boucht, bucht, bout (“bend”). More at bight and bout.

See bust (Etymology 2)

The verb comes from a Middle English variant of "burst," so bust and burst are historically the same word. The noun meaning "head-and-shoulders sculpture" or "chest measurement" comes from a separate root, French buste.

From Old English "berstan," tracing back to a Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to burst, break, or split."

The past tense is inherited from Middle English burnede. The past participle (from which the adjective is also derived) is inherited from Middle English burned. Synchronically, both forms are equivalent to burn + -ed.

Inherited from Middle English brent, brynt; by surface analysis, burn + t.

From Old English forms (bærnan, byrnan) going back to a Proto-Germanic root meaning "to burn" — a distant relative of the word "brew."

From Old English byldan/bytlian, "to build," ultimately from a Germanic root meaning "house, dwelling."

From dissociate + -ive.

Uncertain, possibly imitative of the sound; the ship-deck sense comes separately from Old French/Latin puppis, "stern."

From Latin repositorium, a place for putting things back or setting things down for storage.

Originally an agricultural term from the 18th century meaning to scatter seed widely by hand; it was later adapted for radio and television transmission.

From Old English bringan, an ancient Germanic verb that has meant "to carry something to a place" for well over a thousand years.

From Old English brēdan, related to a root meaning "to warm" or "to brood" — the original sense was close to hatching eggs by keeping them warm.

From Old English brocen, the past participle of the verb "to break," inherited from a common Germanic root.

An older past-tense form of "break," which survives today mainly as the adjective meaning "out of money."

From Old English brecan ("to break"), an ancient Germanic word related to Latin frangere — the root behind English words like fracture and fragment.

Past participle of "blow," from Old English blawan.

From Old English blawan ("to blow, breathe, sound"), from a Proto-Germanic root meaning to swell or blow up — related to Latin flo, "to blow."

From French bled, from Algerian Arabic, from Arabic بِلَاد (bilād).