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 fif, from a very old Germanic root going all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European word for "five."

From Old English feower, from Proto-Germanic fedwor, tracing back to the ancient Proto-Indo-European word for the number four.

From Old English þrī, from a very old Indo-European root for the number three, shared with Latin trēs and Greek treîs.

From Old English twā, going back through Germanic to the ancient Indo-European root for "two," shared with words like Latin duo and Greek dúo — it is a very old, widely inherited number word.

From Old English an, from Proto-Germanic ainaz, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "single."

From Old English græs, an ancient word going back to a root meaning "to grow" — related to "green" and "grow".

From Old English feowertiene niht, literally "fourteen nights" — the Anglo-Saxons counted time by nights rather than days.

From Old French decade, from Greek dekas, "a set of ten," from deka, "ten."

From Latin Germanus, the Roman name for the peoples living east of the Rhine — not historically connected to the unrelated adjective "german" meaning "closely related," which comes through a different route from the same Latin root.

From Middle French parole, "word, formal promise" — the idea being that a prisoner gives their "word" to behave.

From Latin quartarius, related to quartus, "fourth" — the same root behind quart and quarterly.

A back-formation from teleportation — shortened once the longer word was already established.

From French acide, from Latin acidus, "sour," related to the verb aceo, "to be sour."

From Old French achever ("to finish"), the same root as "achieve," with the ending "-ment" added to turn the verb into a noun.

From Latin alphabetum, formed from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet — themselves borrowed from the Phoenician letter names aleph ("ox") and beth ("house").

From French bureaucrate, built from "bureau" plus "-crat" ("ruler, member of a ruling group").

From Greek roots meaning "sharp" and "dull/foolish" — the word describing contradictions is itself a small contradiction.

From Old French nombre, from Latin numerus ("number"), tracing back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to divide" or "to allot".

Traces back through French and Italian to an Arabic word for "empty" or "nothing," which itself translated a Sanskrit term for the void — the same root that gives us "cipher."

The verb goes back to Old English cunnan, "to know how"; it is a distant relative of "know". The container sense comes from a separate Old English word, candel-related only by coincidence.

From Old Norse ský ("cloud"), which gradually replaced the older English word heofon in everyday use — heofon survives today as "heaven".

From Old English steorra, going back through Proto-Germanic to an ancient Indo-European root also behind Latin stella and Greek astēr — making "star" a distant cousin of words like "astronomy" and "disaster."

From Greek planetes, "wanderer" — the ancient Greeks noticed that a handful of bright points in the sky moved against the fixed background of stars, so they called them "wandering stars."

From Old English wulf, from a very old Germanic root shared with words across the Indo-European family, including Latin lupus and Ancient Greek λύκος (lykos) — both also meaning "wolf".