L

laager see LAIR

label see LAP

labial see LIP

labour [13] Labour comes via Old French labour from Latin labor. This has been linked with the verb labre ‘slip’, and if the two were related it would mean that the underlying etymological meaning of labour was something like ‘stumble under a burden’. Most of the modern European descendants of Latin labor have progressed from the broad sense ‘work, exertion’ to more specialized meanings – French labourer denotes ‘plough’, for instance, and Spanish labrar ‘plough, carve, embroider’, etc. English has retained it as a formal alternative to work, although the additional obstetric sense developed in the 16th century.

lace [13] Lace originally meant ‘noose’ or ‘snare’, and its underlying semantic connections are not with ‘string’ or ‘thread’ but with ‘entrapment’ or ‘enticement’. Its ultimate source was Latin laqueus ‘noose’, which was related to the verb lacere ‘lure, deceive’ (source of English delicious and elicit). This passed into Vulgar Latin as *lacium, which in due course diversified into Italian laccio, Spanish lazo (source of English lasso [19]), and French lacs. It was the latter’s Old French predecessor, laz or las, that gave English lace. The sense ‘noose’ had died out by the early 17th century, but by then it had already developed via ‘string, cord’ to ‘cord used for fastening clothes’. ‘Open fabric made of threads’ emerged in the mid-16th century. Latch [14] is thought to be distantly related.

DELICIOUS, ELICIT, LASSO, LATCH

lachrymal see TEAR

lachrymose see TEAR

lack [12] The word lack is not known to have existed in Old English, although it is by no means impossible that it did. If it was a borrowing, a possible source would have been Middle Dutch lak ‘deficiency, fault’. This has been traced back to a prehistoric Germanic *lak-, a variant of which produced English leak.

LEAK

lackey [16] By a circuitous series of steps, lackey is of Arabic origin. English borrowed it from French laquais, which originally denoted a sort of foot-soldier, and hence a ‘footman’ or ‘servant’. French in turn got it from Catalan alacay, whose source was Arabic al-qd ‘the judge’ (the Spanish version alcalde ‘magistrate’ was acquired by English in the 17th century).

laconic [16] The Greek term for an inhabitant of the ancient region of Laconia, in the southern Peloponnese, and of its capital Sparta, was Lákn. The Spartans were renowned for not using two words where one would do (there is a story that when Philip of Macedon threatened invasion with ‘If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground’, the Spartans’ only reply was ‘If’), and so English used the adjective laconic (from Greek Laknikós) for ‘sparing of speech’.

lacquer see LAKE

lacrosse [18] French la crosse means ‘the hooked stick’ (crosse was originally borrowed from a prehistoric Germanic *kruk-, from which English got crook and crutch). French speakers in Canada used the term jeu de la crosse ‘game of the hooked stick’ to name a game played by the native Americans with netted sticks, and in due course this became reduced and lexicalized to lacrosse.

CROOK, CRUTCH

lactation see LETTUCE

lacuna see LAKE

lad [13] Lad originally meant ‘male of low status or social rank’, and hence ‘male servant’, but by the 14th century its progression to the present-day ‘young male’ was well under way. It is not known where it came from, but there seems to be a strong likelihood of a Scandinavian origin (Norwegian has -ladd in compounds referring to ‘(male) persons’).

ladder [OE] Etymologically, a ladder is something that is ‘leant’ up against a wall. Like Greek klmax ‘ladder’ (source of English climax), it goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *khli-, source of English lean. Its West Germanic relatives are German leiter and Dutch leer.

CLIMAX, LEAN

lade see LOAD

ladle see LOAD

lady [OE] Originally, the term lady denoted a ‘kneader of bread’. It comes from Old English hlœfdige, a compound formed from hlf ‘bread’ (ancestor of modern English loaf) and an element *dig- ‘knead’ (related to English dough). It is a measure of the symbolic (and actual) importance of bread in medieval households that (like lord, also a derivative of loaf) lady came, as a provider of bread, to be applied to someone in a position of authority within a house.

DAIRY, DOUGH, LOAF, LORD

lag English has three distinct words lag. The verb ‘fall behind’ [16] is perhaps of Scandinavian origin (Norwegian has lagga ‘go slowly’), although a link has been suggested with the lag of fog, seg, lag, a dialect expression used in children’s games which represents an alteration of first, second, last. Lag ‘insulate’ [19] comes from an earlier noun lag ‘barrel stave’, which was also probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language (Swedish has lagg ‘stave’); the original material used for ‘lagging’ was wooden laths. And finally the noun lag ‘prisoner’ [19] seems to have come from an earlier verb lag, which originally meant ‘steal’, and then ‘catch, imprison’; but no one knows where this came from.

lager [19] Lager is etymologically beer that has been matured by being kept in a ‘store’. English borrowed the term from German lagerbier, a compound based on the noun lager ‘storeroom’ (to which English laager and lair are closely related).

LAAGER, LAIR

lagoon see LAKE

lair [OE] Etymologically a lair is a place where you ‘lie’ down. For it comes ultimately from the same Germanic base, *leg-, as produced English lie. In Old English it had a range of meanings, from ‘bed’ to ‘grave’, which are now defunct, and the modern sense ‘place where an animal lives’ did not emerge until the 15th century. Related Germanic forms show different patterns of semantic development: Dutch leger, for instance, means ‘bed’ and ‘camp’ (it has given English beleaguer [16] and, via Afrikaans, laager [19]) and German lager (source of English lager) means ‘bed’, ‘camp’, and ‘storeroom’.

Layer in the sense ‘stratum’ [17] (which to begin with was a culinary term) may have originated as a variant of lair.

BELEAGUER, LAAGER, LAGER, LAY, LAYER, LIE

lake English has two words lake. The one meaning ‘body of water’ [13] comes via Old French lac from Latin lacus.This goes back to the same prehistoric source as produced Gaelic loch (acquired by English in the 14th century) and Latin lacna ‘hole, pit, pool’ (from which English got lacuna [17] and, via Italian or Spanish, lagoon [17]); this seems to have denoted ‘hole, basin’, the notion of ‘water-filled hole’ being a secondary development.

Lake the colour [17], now usually encountered only in crimson lake, is a variant of lac, a term for a reddish resin or dye that comes via Dutch or French from Hindi lkh, and forms the second syllable of English shellac. Its ultimate source is Sanskrit lksh. Lacquer [16] comes via early modern French lacre ‘sealing-wax’ from laca, the Portuguese version of lac.

LACUNA, LAGOON; LACQUER, SHELLAC

lamb [OE] Lamb is a widespread word throughout the Germanic languages (German and Swedish have lamm and Dutch and Danish have lam), but no connections have ever been established with any animal-names in non-Germanic languages. In Gothic, lamb was used for ‘adult sheep’ as well as ‘lamb’.

lambent see LAP

lame [OE] Prehistoric Germanic had an adjective *lamon which meant ‘weak-limbed’, and seems to have originated in a base which meant something like ‘break by hitting’ (English lam ‘hit’ [16], as in ‘lam into someone’, and its derivative lambaste [17] probably come from the same source). In the modern Germanic languages it has diversified into two strands of meaning: Dutch, Swedish, and Danish lam denote mainly ‘paralysed’, a sense also present in German lahm, while English lame has taken the path of ‘limping, crippled’.

LAM, LAMBASTE

laminate see OMELETTE

Lammas see LOAF

lamp [12] A lamp is literally something that ‘shines’. The word comes via Old French lampe and Latin lampas from Greek lampás, which was derived from the verb lámpein ‘give light, shine’ (source also of English lantern). The Greek word originally denoted a ‘bunch of burning sticks, torch’, but in post-classical times it was applied to an ‘oil lamp’. The Old English word for ‘lamp’ was literally ‘light-vessel’.

LANTERN

lamprey [12] The words lamprey and limpet [OE] come from the same source: medieval Latin lamprda. This was an alteration of an earlier, 5th-century lampetra, which has been plausibly explained as literally ‘stone-licker’ (from Latin lambre ‘lick’, source of English lambent, and petra ‘stone’). The reason for applying such a name to the limpet is fairly obvious – it clings fast to rocks – but in fact the lamprey too holds on to rocks, with its jawless sucking mouth.

LAMBENT, LIMPET, PETROL

lance [13] Lance is now a fairly widespread word throughout the European languages: German has lanze, for instance, Swedish lans, Italian lancia, and Spanish lanza. English acquired the word from Old French lance, which in turn came from Latin lancea, but its ultimate origin may have been Celtic. Derived words in English include élan and launch.

Lance corporals [18] were not named because they carried lances. The term was based on the now obsolete lancepesade ‘officer of lowest rank’, which came via Old French from Old Italian lancia spezzata, literally ‘broken lance’, hence ‘old soldier’.

ÉLAN, LAUNCH

land [OE] Land goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *landam. This seems originally to have meant ‘particular (enclosed) area’ (ancestor of the modern sense ‘nation’), but in due course it branched out to ‘solid surface of the earth in general’. The term is now common to all the Germanic languages, and it has distant relatives in Welsh llan ‘enclosure, church’ and Breton lann ‘heath’ (source of French lande ‘heath, moor’, from which English gets lawn).

LAWN

language [13] Like English tongue, Latin lingua ‘tongue’ was used figuratively for ‘language’; from it English gets linguist [16] and linguistic [19]. In the Vulgar Latin spoken by the inhabitants of Gaul, the derivative *linguticum emerged, and this became in due course Old French langage, source of English language. (The u in the English word, which goes back to the end of the 13th century, is due to association with French langue ‘tongue’.)

LINGUISTIC

languish see RELISH

lank see LINK

lanolin see WOOL

lantern [13] Like lamp, lantern comes ultimately from the Greek verb lámbein ‘give light, shine’. Derived from this was the noun lamptr, which originally denoted ‘bunch of burning sticks, torch’, but was later extended to ‘lamp’. Latin borrowed it, and tacked on the ending of lucerna ‘lamp’ to produce lanterna, which English acquired via Old French lanterne. The translucent cover of lanterns was in former times usually made of horn, and so popular etymology from the 16th to the 19th centuries produced the spelling lanthorn.

LAMP

lap English now has three distinct words lap, but probably two of them are ultimately related. Lap ‘upper legs of a seated person’ [OE] originally meant ‘flap of a garment’, and it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic source which also produced German lappen ‘rag, cloth, flap, lobe’, and which may lie behind label [14]. It seems likely that lap in the sense ‘folds of a garment’ was the basis of the Middle English verb lap, which meant ‘wrap’, and hence ‘extend beyond’. From this come both the verb overlap [18] and the noun lap [18], whose modern meaning ‘one circuit of a course’ emerged in the 19th century.

Lap ‘lick up’ [OE] comes from a prehistoric Germanic base *lap-, which was related to Latin lambre ‘lick’ (source of English lambent [17], and possibly responsible also for lamprey and limpet).

LABEL; LAMBENT

lapis lazuli see DILAPIDATE

lapwing [OE] The present-day form of the word lapwing is due to the notion that it describes the way the bird’s wings overlap in flight, but in fact although it did originally refer to the way the bird flies, it has no etymological connection with lap or wing. Its Old English form was hleupwince, whose first element came from the ancestor of modern English leap, and whose second element went back to a base meaning ‘move from side to side’ that also produced English wink. So etymologically the lapwing is the ‘leapwink’, the bird that tumbles and jinks in flight – as indeed it does.

Its alternative name peewit [13] describes its call.

larceny [15] The Latin word for ‘robber’ was latr. Its original meaning was ‘mercenary soldier’, and it came from Greek látron ‘pay’ (a relative of latreí‘service, worship’, which provided the suffix in such English words as idolatry and bardolatry). From latr was derived latrcinium ‘robbery’, which passed into English via Old French larcin and its Anglo-Norman derivative *larcenie.

IDOLATRY

large [12] Latin largus, a word of unknown origin, meant ‘abundant’ and also ‘generous’. It retained the latter meaning when it came into English via Old French large (‘the poor King Reignier, whose large style agrees not with the leanness of his purse’, Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI 1593), but this now survives only in the derivative largesse [13]. ‘Abundant’, on the other hand, has provided the basis of the main modern English meaning ‘of great size’, which emerged in the 15th century.

lascivious see LUST

lass [13] Like its male counterpart lad, lass has an obscure past. The form lasce, recorded in the 13th and 14th centuries, suggests the possibility that it may originally have come from a Scandinavian adjective related to Old Swedish løsk ‘unmarried’.

lassitude see LATE

lasso see LACE

last [OE] Modern English has three separate words last, two of which are related. The adjective, meaning ‘after all others’, originated in prehistoric Germanic as the superlative form of late; its modern Germanic relatives include German letzt and Dutch laatst. The verb last ‘continue’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *laistjan ‘follow a track’, which also produced modern German leisten ‘perform, afford’. This was derived from *laisti-, as was ultimately the noun last, which in Old English meant ‘footprint’ (‘shoemaker’s model foot’ is a secondary development). The general semantic thread ‘following a track’ can be traced back further via Germanic *lais- (a variant of which gave English learn) to Indo-European *leis-(source of Latin dlrre, literally ‘deviate from a straight track’, from which English gets delirious [18]).

DELIRIOUS, LATE, LEARN

latch see LACE

late [OE] English and Dutch (with laat) are the only modern European languages to use this word to express the idea of ‘behind time’. It comes from an Indo-European base *lad- ‘slow, weary’, which also produced Latin lassus ‘tired’ (source of English alas [13] and lassitude [16]). In prehistoric Germanic this gave *lataz ‘slow, sluggish’. Its English descendant late originally meant ‘slow’ (and the related German lass still means ‘lazy’), but although this survived dialectally into the 19th century, in the mainstream language ‘delayed’ had virtually replaced it by the 15th century. From the same ultimate Indo-European source come English lease, let, and liege.

ALAS, LASSITUDE, LAST, LEASE, LET, LIEGE

lather [OE] Indo-European *lou- denoted ‘wash’ (from it English gets laundry, lavatory, lotion, etc). Addition of the suffix *-tro- produced *loutrom, which passed via Germanic *lauthram into English as lather. In Old English this is only recorded as meaning ‘washing soda’, and the modern sense ‘soap bubbles’ does not emerge until the late 16th century.

ABLUTION, LAUNDRY, LAVATORY, LOTION

latitude [14] Latin ltus meant ‘broad’. From it were derived dltre ‘spread out’ (source of English dilate) and ltitd, which English took over as latitude. Its use as a cartographical term stems from the oblong maps of the ancient world, in which distance from north to south represented ‘breadth’ (hence latitude), and distance from east to west represented ‘length’ (hence longitude [16], from Latin longitd, a derivative of longus ‘long’).

DILATE

latrine see LAVATORY

laudanum [16] Laudanum, the name of a tincture of opium, a forerunner of modern heroin and crack, was coined by the 16th-century Swiss physician Paracelsus. He used it for a medicine of his own devising which according to the prescription he gave out contained all sorts of expensive ingredients such as gold leaf and pearls. It was generally believed, however, that the reason for the medicine’s effectiveness was a generous measure of opium in the mixture, and so in due course laudanum came to have its current use. It is not known where Paracelsus got the name from, but he could well have based it on Latin ldanum ‘resin’, which came from Greek ldanon, a derivative of ledon ‘mastic’.

laugh [OE] The word laugh is ultimately onomatopoeic, imitative of the sound of laughter. It goes back to Indo-European *klak-, *klk-, which also produced Greek klssein, a verb denoting the clucking of hens, and Latin clangere ‘sound’ (source of English clangor [16]). Its Germanic descendants were *khlakh-, *khlkh-, from which come German and Dutch lachen, Swedish and Danish le, and English laugh.

CLANGOR

launch English has two separate words launch. The verb, ‘propel’ [14], is related to lance. Lances are propelled by throwing, and so the derived Old French verb lancier was used for ‘throw’. English acquired it via the Anglo-Norman form launcher. The sense ‘put a boat into the water’ emerged at the end of the 14th century. From the same source came modern French élancer ‘throw out’, whose derivative élan was acquired by English in the 19th century.

Launch ‘boat’ [17] comes via Portuguese lancha from a Malay word related to lancharan ‘boat’.

ÉLAN, LANCE

laundry [16] Although it is better disguised than most of its relatives, laundry is one of a large family of English words derived from Latin lavre ‘wash’ (see LAVATORY). It is a contraction of an earlier lavendry, which came via Old French lavanderie from Latin lavandrium ‘things to be washed’. By the time it reached English it had also acquired the meaning ‘place where things are washed’.

LAVATORY

lavatory [14] The notion of ‘washing’ was represented in prehistoric Indo-European by *lou-, which produced Greek loúein ‘wash’, English lather, and Latin lavre ‘wash’. This last has been a fruitful source of English words, not all of them as obvious as lavatory, which originally meant simply ‘place or vessel for washing’ (its use for a ‘room containing a water closet’ appears to date from the 19th century). Among its relatives are deluge [14], latrine [17] (from a contraction of Latin lavtrna), laundry, lava [18] (from Italian lava, which originally denoted a ‘stream caused by sudden rain’), lavish [15] (from the metaphorical notion of an ‘outpouring’), and lotion [14]. And from Latin luere, the form taken on by lavre after prefixes, we get ablution [14] and dilute [16]. Lavender [15] looks as though it should belong to the same family, but no actual connection has ever been demonstrated.

ABLUTION, DELUGE, DILUTE, LATHER, LATRINE, LAUNDRY, LAVA, LAVISH, LOTION

law [10] Etymologically, a law is that which has been ‘laid’ down. English borrowed the word from Old Norse *lagu (replacing the native Old English ‘law’), which was the plural of lag ‘laying, good order’. This came ultimately from the prehistoric Germanic base *lag- ‘put’, from which English gets lay. It has no etymological connection with the semantically similar legal.

LAY

lawn English has two words lawn. ‘Grassy area’ [16] is ultimately the same word as land. It is an alteration of an earlier laund ‘glade’, which came from Old French launde ‘heath’, a borrowing from the same prehistoric Germanic source as produced English land. Lawn was originally used for ‘glade’ too, and it was not until the 18th century that its present-day meaning emerged. Lawn ‘fine linen or cotton’ [15] probably comes from Laon, the name of a town in northern France where linen was formerly manufactured.

LAND

lax see LEASE, RELISH

lay English has three words lay. The common verb, ‘cause to lie’ [OE], goes back to the prehistoric Germanic base *lag- ‘put’, a variant of which produced lie. From it was derived *lagjan, whose modern descendants are German legen, Dutch leggen, Swedish lägga, Danish lgge, and English lay. Law comes from the same source, and it is possible that ledge [14] may be an offshoot of lay (which in Middle English was legge). Ledger could well be related too.

Lay ‘secular’ [14] comes via Old French lai and Latin licus from Greek likós, a derivative of lós ‘the people’. And lay ‘ballad’ [13] comes from Old French lai, a word of unknown origin.

LAW, LIE, LEDGER; LITURGY

layer see LAIR

lazy [16] Lazy is one of the problem words of English. It suddenly appears in the middle of the 16th century, and gradually replaces the native terms slack, slothful, and idle as the main word for expressing the concept ‘averse to work’, but no one knows for sure where it came from. Early spellings such as laysy led 19th-century etymologists to speculate that it may have been derived from lay, but the more generally accepted theory nowadays is that it was borrowed from Low German. Middle Low German had the similar lasich ‘lazy, loose’, which may go back to an Indo-European form denoting ‘slack’.

lead [OE] English has two words lead, spelled the same but of course pronounced differently and with a very different history. The verb goes back to a prehistoric West and North Germanic *laithjan. This was derived from *laith‘way, journey’ (from which English gets load); so etymologically lead means ‘cause to go along one’s way’. Its Germanic relatives include German leiten, Dutch leiden, Swedish leda, and Danish lede.

Lead the metal is probably of Celtic origin. The prehistoric Celtic word for ‘lead’ was *loudi, which may have come ultimately from an Indo-European source meaning ‘flow’ (a reference to the metal’s low melting point). Its modern descendants include Irish luaidhe and Gaelic luaidh. It could well have been borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as *lauda, which would have produced modern German lot ‘solder’, Dutch lood ‘lead’, and English lead.

LOAD

leaf [OE] Leaf goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *laubaz, which also produced words for ‘foliage’ in other modern Germanic languages (German laub, Dutch loof, Swedish löf, and Danish løv). It is not known for certain where the Germanic word came from, although a connection has been suggested with Russian lupit’ ‘bark’. It may also lie behind the modern English words lobby and lodge.

LOBBY, LODGE

leak [15] The ultimate source of leak is probably a prehistoric Germanic *lek-, which denoted ‘deficiency’ (a variant *lak- gave English lack). It is not clear how this reached English; it could have been via Old Norse leka, or through Middle Dutch lken.

LACK

lean [OE] Lean ‘thin’ and lean ‘incline’ are of course of completely different origin. The adjective goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlainjaz. The verb can be traced to an Indo-European base *kli- ‘lean, slope’, which has given English a wealth of vocabulary. Via Greek intermediaries have come climate, climax, and clinic, while its Latin descendant clnre has produced decline, incline, and recline. The prehistoric Germanic verb formed from it was *khlinojan, which has diversified into modern German lehnen, Dutch leunen, and English lean. From the same Germanic base come ladder, and also perhaps links ‘golf course’ [OE], which originally meant ‘sloping or rising ground’.

CLIMATE, CLIMAX, CLINIC, DECLINE, INCLINE, LADDER, LINKS, RECLINE

leap [OE] Prehistoric Germanic *khlaupan was the source of English leap, and of its relatives German laufen and Dutch loopen (these both denote ‘run’, a meaning which leap used to have – and which is preserved in its first cousins lope [15], a borrowing from Old Norse, and elope). It is not known where it ultimately came from, although a connection has been suggested with Indo-European *kloub-, source of Lithuanian šlubuoti ‘limp’. The verb loaf may be related.

LOAF, LOPE

leap year [14] The inspiration for the term leap year is probably simply that in such a year the day on which any given date falls ‘jumps’ one day ahead of where it would have been in an ordinary year. The metaphorical application of the notion of ‘jumping’ to this phenomenon predates the first record of the term leap year : medieval Latin, for instance, used the term saltus lunae ‘moon’s jump’ for the nineteen-yearly omission of a day from the lunar calendar, and this was translated into Old English as mnan hlp ‘moon’s leap’.

learn [OE] Learn comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *liznjan, which also produced German lernen. This goes back ultimately to an Indo-European *leis- ‘track’, and so seems to carry the underlying notion of ‘gaining experience by following a track’. Very closely related are terms in various Germanic languages for ‘teach’ (German lehren, for instance, and Dutch leeren, Swedish löra, and Danish lre – the last three also mean ‘learn’). English used to have such a verb for ‘teach’ too: lere. It had largely died out by the 19th century, but the related lore ‘knowledge’ [OE] survives.

LAST, LORE

lease [15] The etymological idea underlying lease is of ‘letting go’ – a notion more readily apparent in its close relative release. Its ultimate ancestor is the Latin adjective laxus ‘loose’, source of English lax [14]. From this was derived the verb laxre ‘loosen, let go’, which passed into Old French as laissier (its modern descendant is laisser ‘leave, let’). Anglo-Norman took it over as lesser , and used it for ‘letting something go’ to someone else for a certain period under the terms of a legal contract. Hence English lease. The derivatives lessee [15] and lessor [15] also come from Anglo-Norman.

LAX, RELEASE

least [OE] In origin, least is simply the superlative form of less. The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of less was *laisiz (itself a comparative form). Addition of the superlative suffix produced *laisistaz, which passed into Old English as lsest. Unchanged, this would have become in modern English *lessest, but it was contracted in the Old English period to lst, and so modern English has least.

LESS

leather [OE] The Indo-European ancestor of leather was *letrom. It has descendants in two branches of the Indo-European language family: in Celtic, Welsh lledr, Irish leathar, and Breton ler; and in Germanic, German leder, Dutch leer, Swedish läder, Danish lder, and English leather.

leave [OE] English has two distinct words leave. The noun, meaning ‘permission’, comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *laub, which was derived from a root meaning ‘pleasure, approval’ (other English words from the same source include believe and love). It passed semantically through ‘be well disposed to’ to ‘trust’ (a sense preserved in the related believe, and also in the cognate German glauben ‘believe’), and from there to ‘permit’.

The verb leave ‘go away’ comes from a prehistoric Germanic *laibjan ‘remain’. It has been speculated that this is related ultimately to various Indo-European words for ‘sticky substances’ or ‘stickiness’ (Sanskrit lipta-‘sticky’, for instance, and Greek lípos ‘grease’, source of English lipid [20]), and that its underlying meaning is ‘remaining stuck’, hence ‘staying in a place’. The sense ‘remain’ survived into English, but it died out in the 16th century, leaving as its legacy the secondary causative sense ‘cause to remain’. The apparently opposite sense ‘go away’, which emerged in the 13th century, arose from viewing the action of the verb from the point of view of the person doing the leaving rather than of the thing being left. The related German bleiben, which incorporates the prefix bi-, still retains the sense ‘remain’. Other related English words, distant and close respectively, are eclipse and eleven.

BELIEVE, LOVE; ECLIPSE, ELEVEN, LIPID, TWELVE

lecher [12] Etymologically, a lecher is a ‘licker’. English borrowed the word from Old French lecheor, a derivative of the verb lechier ‘lick’, which was used figuratively for ‘live a life of debauchery’. This in turn came from Frankish *likkn, a descendant of the same prehistoric Germanic source as English lick [OE]. The inspiration of the metaphor, which originally encompassed the pleasures of the table as well as of the bed, was presumably the tongue as an organ of sensual gratification.

LICK

lecture [14] The Latin verb legere has been a prodigious contributor to English vocabulary. It originally meant ‘gather, choose’, and in that guise has given us collect, elect, elegant, intelligent, legion [13] (etymologically a ‘chosen’ body), neglect, and select. It subsequently developed semantically to ‘read’, and from that mode English has taken lecture, lectern [14] (from the medieval Latin derivative lectrnum), legend [14] (etymologically ‘things to be read’), and lesson.

COLLECT, ELECT, ELEGANT, INTELLIGENT, LEGEND, LEGIBLE, LEGION, LESSON, NEGLECT, SELECT

ledger [15] Etymologically, a ledger is a book that ‘lies’ in one place. The term was used in 15th- and 16th-century English with various specific applications, including a ‘large copy of the Breviary’ (the Roman Catholic service book), and a ‘large register or record-book’ – both big volumes that would not have been moved around much – but it finally settled on the ‘main book in the set of books used for keeping accounts’. It probably comes from Dutch legger or ligger, agent nouns derived respectively from leggen ‘lay’ and liggen ‘lie’ (relatives of English lay and lie).

LAY, LIE

left [13] The Old English word for ‘left’ was winestra. Etymologically this meant ‘friendlier’ (it is related to Swedish vän ‘friend’), and its euphemistic application to ‘left’ is a reminder that historically the left-hand side of the body has been superstitiously regarded as of ill omen. To call it ‘friendly’ (a usage which survives in Swedish vänster and Danish venstre ‘left’) was an attempt to placate the evil forces of the left. (Latin sinister ‘left’ is similarly fraught with negative connotations. It too had euphemistic origins – it came from a source meaning ‘more useful’ – and it developed the figurative senses ‘unfavourable’, ‘injurious’, etc, taken over and extended by English in sinister [15].)

An ancestor of left existed in Old English – left or *lyft. But it meant ‘weak’ or ‘foolish’, and it was not until the 13th century that it came to be used as the partner of right. Its ultimate origins are not known.

leg [13] Shank was the word used in Old English for ‘leg’. Not until the late 13th was leg acquired, from Old Norse leggr. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lagjaz, which may ultimately come from a source that meant ‘bend’. No other Germanic language any longer uses it for ‘leg’, but Swedish and Danish retain lägg and lg respectively for ‘calf’.

legal [16] The Latin term for a ‘law’ was lex. From its stem form leg- come English legal, legislator [17] (which goes back to a Latin compound meaning literally ‘one who proposes a law’), and legitimate [15]. Loyal is a doublet of legal, acquired via Old French rather than directly from Latin. Another derivative of legwas the Latin verb lgre ‘depute, commission, bequeath’, which has given English colleague, college, delegate [14], legacy [14], and legation [15].

COLLEAGUE, COLLEGE, DELEGATE, LEGACY, LOYAL

legend see LECTURE

legion see LECTURE

legume see LOBE

leisure [14] The etymological idea underlying leisure is that of ‘having permission’, and hence of ‘having the freedom to do as one likes’. The word came via Anglo-Norman leisour from Old French leisir. This was a noun use of a verb that meant ‘be permitted’, and came from Latin licre ‘be permitted’ (source of English illicit [17] and licence [14]).

ILLICIT, LICENCE

lemon see LIME

lend [15] Lend and loan are closely related – come in fact from the same ultimate source (which also produced English delinquent, ellipse, and relinquish). Why then does the verb have a d while the noun does not? Originally there was no d. The Old English verb ‘lend’ was lnan, which in Middle English became lene. But gradually during the Middle English period the past form lende came to be reinterpreted as a present form, and by the 15th century it was established as the new infinitive.

DELINQUENT, ELLIPSE, LOAN, RELINQUISH

length [OE] Length was coined in the prehistoric Germanic period from the adjective *langgaz (source of English long) and the abstract noun suffix *-ith. The resultant *langgith has subsequently diversified to Dutch lengte, Swedish längd, Danish lngde, and English length. (German has plumped for the different noun derivative länge ‘length’, whose English relative lenge ‘length’ survived until the 17th century.)

LONG

lens [17] The Latin word for a ‘lentil’ was lns; and when 17th-century scientists wanted a term for a round biconvex (lentil-shaped) piece of glass, they needed to look no further than lens. English lentil [13] itself comes via Old French from Latin lenticula, a diminutive form of lns.

LENTIL

Lent [OE] The etymological meaning of Lent is ‘long days’. It comes from *langgitnaz, a prehistoric West Germanic compound formed from *lanngaz ‘long’ and an element *tnadenoting ‘day’. This signified originally ‘spring’, an allusion to the lengthening days at that time of year. It passed into Old English as lencten, which became Middle English lenten, but in the 13th century the -en was dropped from the noun, leaving Lenten to function as an adjective. By this time too the secular sense ‘spring’ was fast dying out, having been usurped by the application of Lent to the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

LONG

lentil see LENS

leotard [19] The leotard commemorates the French trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1830–70), who wore such a garment when he was performing. He was one of the foremost circus acrobats of his day, and a pioneer of aerial stunts: he performed the first mid-air somersault, and invented the ‘flying trapeze’ (he became known as the ‘Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’, from George Leybourne’s song (1860) of that name), but fate has decreed that his name should be passed down to posterity in the form of a one-piece exercise garment.

leper [13] Etymologically, a person suffering from leprosy has ‘scaly’ skin. The Greek word for ‘scale’ was lépos or lepís. From them was derived the adjective leprós ‘scaly’, whose feminine form lépr was used as a noun meaning ‘leprosy’. This passed via Latin lepra and Old French lepre into English as leper, where it still denoted ‘leprosy’. In the 14th century it came to be used for a ‘person suffering from leprosy’.

leprechaun [17] Leprechaun means literally ‘little body’. It comes from an Irish compound noun made up of the adjective lu ‘little’ and corp ‘body’ (a borrowing from Latin corpus). Its original Old Irish form was luchorpán, and in modern Irish this became leipracán. The first record of its use in English is in Thomas Middleton’s Honest whore 1604: ‘as for your Irish lubrican, that spirit whom by preposterous charms thy lust hath rais’d in a wrong circle’.

CORPSE

lesbian [16] Originally, and for many centuries, Lesbian simply meant ‘of Lesbos’, referring to the Aegean island of that name, off the Turkish coast. Then, in the second half of the 19th century, probably some time before 1870, it embarked on a more sensational career. The lyric poet Sappho (c. 600 BC) lived on Lesbos, and she was noted for the love poems she wrote to other women. Her name was invoked directly (in Sapphism) around this time as a genteel literary allusion to female homosexuality, but it was the even more deeply euphemistic lesbian that went on to become the main English term in this area.

less [OE] In origin, less is a comparative form. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *loiso-‘small’, which in prehistoric Germanic had the comparative suffix added to it to produce *laisiz – whence English less. It is not found in any of the other modern Germanic languages.

LEAST

lessee see LEASE

lesson [13] Etymologically, a lesson is ‘something read’ – as indeed the lesson read in church still is. The word comes via Old French lecon from Latin lecti ‘reading’, a derivative of the verb legere ‘read’ (from which English gets lectern, lecture, etc). The word’s educational sense arose from the notion of a passage of text that a child had to read and learn.

LECTERN, LECTURE, LEGIBLE

let [OE] English has two distinct verbs let, of diametrically opposite meaning, but they are probably ultimately related. The one meaning ‘allow’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lt- (source also of German lassen and Dutch laten) which, like the related late, is connected with a range of words denoting ‘slowness’ or ‘weariness’. It therefore appears that the underlying etymological meaning of let is ‘let go of something because one is too tired to hold on to it’. By the time the verb reached Old English this had developed to ‘leave behind’ and ‘omit to do’, senses now defunct, as well as to ‘allow’.

A close relative of the base *lt- was *lat, direct ancestor of English late. From this was formed the Germanic verb *latjan, which gave English its other verb let, meaning ‘prevent’, now largely obsolete except as a noun, in the phrase without let or hindrance or as a tennis term.

LATE

lethargy [14] Greek lth meant ‘oblivion’ (the Romans used it for the name of a river in Hades whose water induced forgetfulness, and its influence has also been traced in changing Latin ltum ‘death’ to lthum, source of English lethal [17]). From it was formed the adjective lthargos, which in turn produced the noun lthargi, source (via Latin and Old French) of English lethargy.

LETHAL

letter [13] The distant ancestry of the word letter has never been satisfactorily explained. One possible candidate as a source that has been put forward is Greek diphthérai ‘writing tablets’. But the earliest precursor that can be positively identified is Latin littera. This meant ‘alphabetic symbol’, or in the plural ‘document’ and ‘epistle’. English acquired it via Old French lettre. Also from Latin littera are English literature and obliterate [16], which means etymologically ‘remove letters’.

LITERATURE, OBLITERATE

lettuce [13] The lettuce was named for the milky white sap that exudes from its stalk when cut. The Latin for milk is lac (source of English lactation [17] and lactose [19]), and so the lettuce was christened lactca. This passed into English via laituës, the plural of Old French laituë.

LACTATION, LACTOSE

leukaemia see LIGHT

level [14] The Latin word for a ‘balance’ or ‘scales’ was libra (it has given English Libra the zodiacal sign [14] and also lies behind many terms for units of measurement, including litre and the abbreviation lb for ‘pound’). Its diminutive form was lbella, which denoted an ‘instrument for checking horizontality’, and hence a ‘horizontal line’. It passed into Old French as livel (which in modern French has become niveau ‘level’), and English took it over as level.

LITRE

liable [15] Today’s main meaning of liable , ‘likely to’, is a comparatively recent development. Its primary sense is ‘legally bound or obliged’ (as in ‘liable for someone else’s debts’), which goes right back to the word’s ultimate source, Latin ligre ‘tie’. Its Old French descendant lier is assumed to have give rise to an Anglo-Norman derivative *liable, literally ‘bindable’, which English took over. Other English words that come ultimately from ligre include ally, liaison [17], lien [16] (etymologically a ‘bond’), ligament [14], ligature [14], oblige, religion, and rely.

ALLY, LIAISON, LIEN, LIGAMENT, LIGATURE, OBLIGE, RELIGION, RELY

libel see LIBRARY

liberal [14] The Latin word for ‘free’ was lber. It came from the same prehistoric source as Greek eleútheros ‘free’, which may have denoted ‘people, nation’ (in which case the underlying etymological meaning of the word would be ‘being a member of the (free) people’, as opposed to ‘being a slave’). From lber was derived lberlis ‘of freedom’, which passed into English via Old French liberal. Its earliest English meanings were ‘generous’ and ‘appropriate to the cultural pursuits of a ‘free’ man’ (as in ‘the liberal arts’). The connotations of ‘tolerance’ and ‘lack of prejudice’ did not emerge until the 18th century, and the word’s use as a designation of a particular political party in Britain dates from the early 19th century.

Also from Latin lber come English libertine [14] and liberty [14].

LIBERTINE, LIBERTY

libidinous see LOVE

library [14] The Latin word for ‘book’ was liber. It is related to Russian lub ‘bark’ and Lithuanian luba ‘board’, and originally denoted ‘bark’, as used for writing on before the introduction of papyrus. From it was derived librria ‘bookseller’s shop’, which Old French took over as librairie and passed on to English. The English word has only ever been used for a ‘place where books are kept’, or for a ‘collection of books’, but French librairie now exclusively means ‘bookseller’s shop’. Other English derivatives of Latin liber include libel [13] (from the diminutive form libellus ‘little book’; it originally denoted in English simply a ‘formal written claim by a plaintiff’, and did not take on its current connotations of ‘defamation’ until the 17th century) and libretto [18] (also literally a ‘little book’, from an Italian diminutive form).

LIBEL, LIBRETTO

licence see LEISURE

lick see LECHER

lid [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of lid was *khlitham, which also produced Dutch lid and the -lid of German augenlid ‘eyelid’. It comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *kli- ‘cover, shut’.

lie [OE] English has two words lie. The verb ‘recline’ goes back, together with its Germanic relatives (German liegen, Dutch liggen, Swedish ligga. Danish ligge), to a prehistoric base *leg, a variant of the base *lag- which produced lay. Both come ultimately from Indo-European *legh-, *logh-, whose other English descendants include litter and low.

The verb ‘tell untruths’ and its related noun come from a Germanic base *leug-, *loug, represented also in German lügen, Dutch liegen, Swedish ljuga, and Danish lyve. The second syllable of English warlock comes from the same source.

LAY, LIG, LITTER, LOW; WARLOCK

lien see LIABLE

lieutenant [14] Etymologically, a lieutenant is someone who ‘holds the place’ of another (more senior) officer – that is, deputizes for him. The word comes from French lieutenant, a compound formed from lieu ‘place’ and tenant (source of English tenant). Lieu (borrowed independently by English as lieu [13] in the phrase ‘in lieu of’) comes in turn from Latin locus ‘place’, source of English local. Locum tenens [17] (or locum for short) ‘temporary replacement’, literally ‘holding the place’, is thus a parallel formation with lieutenant. Spellings of lieutenant with -f-, indicating the still current British pronunciation /lef-/, first appear as early as the 14th century.

LIEU, LOCAL, TENANT

life [OE] Prehistoric Germanic *lb- denoted ‘remain, be left’. From this was formed the noun *lbam, which in due course produced English life (the semantic connection between ‘remaining’ and life – and the closely related live – is thought to lie in the notion of being ‘left alive after a battle’). Of the noun’s Germanic relatives, Swedish and Danish liv still mean ‘life’, but German leib and Dutch liff have moved on semantically to ‘body’.

English alive is a derivative of life, not of the verb live.

LIVE

lift see LOFT

lig [20] The verb lig, meaning ‘freeload, sponge’, and its derivative ligger, achieved a particular prominence in late 20th-century British English. But in fact its roots go back far into the past. In origin it is simply a variant version of the verb lie ‘recline’. In Old English times this was licgan, and although in the mainstream language licgan became lie, liggen survived dialectally. The sense ‘lie about’ passed naturally into ‘lounge about lazily’, and apparently merged with another dialectal sense ‘steal’ to produce the word’s current meaning.

LIE

ligament see LIABLE

ligature see LIABLE

light [OE] English has two distinct words light. The one meaning ‘illumination’ comes ultimately from Indo-European *leuk-, *louk, *luk-, which also produced Greek leukós ‘white’ (source of English leukaemia [20]) and Latin lx ‘light’ (from which English gets lucifer [OE], literally ‘light-bearer’), lmen ‘light’ (whence English luminous [15]), lcre ‘shine’ (source of English lucid [16]), lstrre ‘light up’ (whence English illustrate and lustre [16]), and lna ‘moon’ (source of English lunar). Its main prehistoric West Germanic derivative was *leukhtam, from which come German and Dutch licht and English light. The word lynx may be related.

Light ‘not heavy’ comes from a prehistoric Germanic *lingkhtaz, a close relative of which produced English lung (the word lung thus etymologically denotes ‘something full of air and not heavy’, and indeed lungs were, and animal lungs still are called lights in English).

ILLUSTRATE, LEUKAEMIA, LUCID, LUMINOUS, LUNAR, LUSTRE, LYNX; LUNG

lightning [14] Etymologically, lightning is simply something that illuminates, or ‘lightens’, the sky. The word is a contraction of an earlier lightening, a derivative of lighten ‘make light’. The Old English word for ‘lightning’ was lget, which is related to light. In Middle English it became leit, and later leiting, but in the 14th century lightning took over as the main form.

LIGHT

like English has a diverse group of words spelled like, but they all come ultimately from the same source. This was prehistoric Germanic *lkam ‘appearance, form, body’ (source also of the lych- of English lych-gate [15], which originally signified the gate through which a coffin was carried into a churchyard). From it was derived the verb *lkjan, which passed into English as like. It originally meant ‘please’, but by the 12th century had done a semantic somersault to ‘find pleasing’. The same Germanic *likam produced English alike, literally ‘similar in appearance’, whose Old Norse relative líkr was borrowed into English as the adjective like [12]. Its adverbial and prepositional uses developed in the later Middle Ages. Also from Old Norse came the derived adjective likely [13].

English each and such were formed from the ancestor of like.

EACH, SUCH

lilac [17] Like the river Nile, the lilac gets its name from its colour. The Sanskrit word for ‘dark blue’ was nla. This passed into Persian as nl, from which was derived nlak ‘bluish’. This developed a variant llak, which English acquired via Arabic llak, Spanish lilac, and early modern French lilac. Along the way it was applied to a shrub of the genus Syringa, on account of its mauve flowers.

lily [OE] Lily probably originated in a pre-Indo-European language of the Mediterranean seaboard. Latin acquired it (either independently or via Greek leírion) as llium, and passed it on to English in the 10th century. It is now common to virtually all western European languages, including German (lilie), Dutch (lelie), Swedish (lilja), Spanish (lirio), Italian (the more radically altered giglio), and French (lis, acquired by English in fleur-de-lis, literally ‘lily flower’ [19]).

limb [OE] The Old English word for ‘limb’ was lim. Like thumb, it later (in the 16th century) acquired an intrusive b, which has long since ceased to be pronounced. It has cognates in Swedish and Danish lem, and Dutch lid ‘limb’ is probably related too.

limbo English has two distinct and probably unrelated words limbo. By far the older is the theological limbo [14], referring originally to that condition in which the souls of the dead exist that are neither in heaven nor in hell. It comes from Latin limbus ‘border, edge’, which in the Middle Ages was used to refer to a region on the borders of, but not actually inside, hell. It very often turned up in the ablative case, in the phrase in limbo, which is how English adopted it. The other limbo [20], denoting a West Indian dance that involves passing underneath a progressively lowered bar, probably comes from limber ‘flexible, supple’ [16], which in turn might be from limb or possibly from limber ‘detachable forward part of a gun-carriage’ [15] (although spellings of that with a b do not occur before the 17th century). No one knows where that limber came from, although it might ultimately be Celtic. Alternatively, if the bar is viewed as a sort of boundary that the dancer must cross, the terpsichorean limbo could be related to the theological limbo.

lime English has three distinct words lime , of which by far the oldest is lime the ‘chalky substance’ [OE]. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lm- (shared also by German leim, Dutch lijm, and Swedish limma), a variant of which also produced English loam [OE]. Lime the ‘citrus fruit’ [17] comes via French lime and Provençal limo from Arabic lmah ‘citrus fruit’, which was also the source of English lemon [14]. And lime the ‘tree’ [17] is an alteration of an earlier line, a variant of lind ‘lime tree’ (the closely related linden was acquired in the 16th century, from German lindenbaum or early modern Dutch lindenboom ‘lime tree’).

LOAM; LEMON; LINDEN

limerick [19] The best-known writer of limericks is of course Edward Lear, but ironically the term limerick was not born until after Lear was dead. It is first recorded in 1896, and is said to have come from a Victorian custom of singing nonsense songs at parties, in the limerick rhyme-scheme (aabba), which always ended with the line ‘Will you come up to Limerick?’ (Limerick of course being a county and town in Ireland).

limit [14] Latin lmes originally denoted a ‘path between fields’, but it became extended metaphorically to any ‘boundary’ or ‘limit’, and that was the sense in which English acquired it (in its stem form lmit-).

LINTEL

limousine [20] Limousin is a former province of central France. Its inhabitants commonly wore a distinctive style of cloak, and when at the beginning of the 20th century a new and luxurious type of car was designed with a closed passenger compartment and an open but roofed seat for the driver, it evidently struck someone that the roof resembled a Limousin cloak, and so the car was named a limousine. The American abbreviation limo is first recorded from the 1960s.

limp English has two words limp, which perhaps share a common ancestry. Neither is particularly old. The verb first crops up in the 16th century (until then the word for ‘walk lamely’ had been halt, which now survives, barely, as an adjective). It was probably adapted from the now obsolete adjective limphalt ‘lame’, a descendant of Old English lemphealt (which goes back ultimately to Indo-European *lomb-). The adjective limp is first recorded in the 18th century, and in view of the common meaning element ‘lack of firmness, infirmity’ it seems likely that it is related to the verb.

limpet see LAMPREY

limpid see LYMPH

linden see LIME

line [OE] The closest modern English line comes to its ancestor is probably in the fisherman’s ‘rod and line’ – a ‘string’ or ‘chord’. For it goes back to Latin lnea ‘string’. This was a derivative of lnum ‘flax’ (source of English linen), and hence meant etymologically ‘flaxen thread’. English acquired it in two separate phases. First of all it was borrowed directly from Latin in the Old English period, and then it made a return appearance via Old French ligne in the 14th century; the two have coalesced to form modern English line. Derived forms include lineage [14], lineal [15], lineament [15], and liner [19]. The last is based on the sense ‘shipping line’, which goes back to the notion of a ‘line’ or succession of ships plying between ports.

ALIGN, LINEAL, LINEN, LINER

linen [OE] The word for ‘flax’ is an ancient one, shared by numerous Indo-European languages: Greek lnon, Latin lnum (source of English line), and prehistoric West Germanic *lnam among them. The latter passed into Old English as ln, but now survives only in the compound linseed (literally ‘flax-seed’). Its adjectival derivative, however, *lnn, lives on in the form linen, nowadays used as a noun meaning ‘cloth made from flax’. The Latin word, or its French descendants lin or linge, have contributed several other derivatives to English, including crinoline, lingerie [19] (literally ‘linen garments’), linnet [16] (etymologically a ‘flax-eating bird’), linoleum [19], and lint [14].

CRINOLINE, LINE, LINGERIE, LINNET, LINOLEUM, LINT

liner see LINE

linger [13] Etymologically, to linger is to remain ‘longer’ than one should. Like its relatives, German längen and Dutch lengen, it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *langgjan ‘lengthen’. In Old Norse this became lengja, which was borrowed into English in the 10th century as leng. By now, ‘lengthen’ had progressed metaphorically via ‘prolong’ to ‘delay’, which is what it meant when linger was derived from it in the 13th century.

LONG

lingerie see LINEN

linguist see LANGUAGE

link [14] Link goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *khlangkjaz, whose underlying meaning element was ‘bending’ (it also has close relatives in English flank [12], flinch [16], and lank [OE]). ‘Bending’ implies ‘joints’ and ‘links’, and this is the meaning which is the word is presumed to have had when it passed into Old Norse as *hlenkr – from which English acquired link.

There is, incidentally, no etymological connection with the now obsolete link ‘torch’ [16], which may have come via medieval Latin linchinus from Greek lúkhnos ‘lamp’, nor with the links on which golf is played, which goes back to Old English hlincas, the plural of hlinc ‘rising ground, ridge’.

FLANK, FLINCH, LANK

links see LEAN

linnet see LINEN

linoleum see LINEN

lint see LINEN

lintel [14] Lintel is the result of the blending of two Latin words: lmes ‘boundary’ (source of English limit) and lmen ‘threshold’ (source of English subliminal and possibly also of sublime). Lmen had a derived adjective, lminris ‘of a threshold’. In the post-classical period, under the influence of lmes, this became altered to *lmitris, which was used in Vulgar Latin as a noun meaning ‘threshold’. This passed into English via Old French lintier, later lintel.

LIMIT, SUBLIMINAL

lion [13] The word for ‘lion’ in virtually all modern European languages goes back to Greek lén, which was presumably borrowed from some non-Indo-European source. From it came Latin lo, which Old English took over as lo. The modern English form lion was introduced in the 13th century via Anglo-French liun. Related forms include French lion, Italian leone, Spanish león, Romanian leu. German löwe, Dutch leeuw, Swedish lejon, Danish løve, Russian lev, and Welsh llew.

The -leon of chameleon represents Greek lén.

CHAMELEON

lip [OE] Lip has been traced back to Indo-European *leb-, which also produced Latin labrum ‘lip’, source of French lèvre ‘lip’ and English labial [16]. Its Germanic descendant was *lepaz-, from which come German lippe, Dutch lip, Swedish läppe, Danish lbe, and English lip.

LABIAL

lipid see LEAVE

liquid [14] Latin liqure meant ‘be fluid’. From it was derived the adjective liquidus, which reached English via Old French (it was not used as a noun in the sense ‘liquid substance’ until the early 18th century). Also derived from liqure was the noun liquor, which passed into Old French as licur or licour. English has borrowed this twice: first in the 13th century as licour, which was subsequently ‘re-latinized’ as liquor, and then in the 18th century in the form of its modern French descendant liqueur. From the same ultimate source come liquefy [16], liquidate [16] (which goes back to a metaphorical sense of Latin liqure, ‘be clear’ – thus ‘clear a debt’; the modern meaning ‘destroy’ was directly inspired by Russian likvidirovat’), and the final syllable of prolix[15].

LIQUOR, PROLIX

liquorice [13] Liquorice, or licorice as it is usually spelled in American English, has no direct etymological connection with liquor (although liquor has played a significant role in its development). It goes back to Greek glukúrrhiza, which meant literally ‘sweet root’ (it was a compound of glukús ‘sweet’, source of English glycerine, and rhíza ‘root’, source of English rhizome [19]). Under the influence of liquor, this was borrowed into post-classical Latin as liquiritia, which passed into English via Old French licoresse and Anglo-Norman lycorys.

GLYCERINE, RHIZOME

list Over the centuries, English has had no fewer than five different words list, only two of which are now in everyday common usage. List ‘catalogue’ [17] was borrowed from French liste ‘band, border, strip of paper, catalogue’. This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lstn, source also of English list ‘border, strip’ [OE], which now survives only in the plural lists ‘tournament arena’. List ‘tilt’ [17] is of unknown origin. List ‘listen’ [OE], which goes back to Indo-European *klu-, has been replaced by the related listen. And the archaic list ‘desire’ [OE] (source of listless [15]) goes back to the same source as lust.

LISTLESS, LUST

listen [OE] The Indo-European base *kludenoted ‘hearing’ (it is the ultimate source of English loud). From its extended form *kluswere derived in prehistoric Germanic the noun *khlustiz ‘hearing’, which eventually produced the now archaic English verb list ‘listen’, and the verb *khlusnojan ‘hear’, which became English listen.

LOUD

listless see LIST

literature [14] Latin littera meant ‘letter’, and was the source of English letter. From it was derived litertus ‘having knowledge of letters’, hence ‘educated, learned’ (source of English literate [15]); and this formed the basis of the further derivative littertra, which denoted ‘writing formed with letters’, and by extension ‘learning, grammar’. English took it over partly direct, partly via French littérature. From the same source comes English literal [14].

LETTER, LITERAL, OBLITERATE

lithograph [19] Greek líthos meant ‘stone’. It has contributed a small cluster of words to English, including lithium [19] (a metal so named from its mineral origin), lithops [20] (the name of a small pebble-like plant, coined in the 1920s, which means literally ‘stoneface’ in Greek), lithosphere [19] (the solid outer layer of the Earth), lithotomy [18] (the surgical removal of stones from the bladder), megalith [19], monolith [19], and the various terms for subdivisions of the Stone Age, such as Neolithic [19] and Paleolithic [19]. Lithography itself, which denotes a method of printing from a flat surface, means etymologically ‘stone-writing’, reflecting the fact that the original printing surfaces in this process were of stone (they are now usually metal).

litmus see MOSS

litre [19] Litre goes back to Greek ltr, a term which denoted a Sicilian monetary unit. This found its way via medieval Latin litr into French as litron, where it was used for a unit of capacity. By the 18th century it had rather fallen out of use, but in 1793 it was revived, in the form litre, as the name for the basic unit of capacity in the new metric system. It is first recorded in English in 1810.

The Greek word was descended from an earlier, unrecorded *lthr, which was borrowed into Latin as lbra ‘pound’. This is the source of various modern terms for units of weight, and hence of currency, including Italian lira and the now disused French livre, and it also lies behind the English symbol £ for ‘pound’.

LEVEL, LIRA

litter [13] The word litter has come a long way semantically since it was born, from ‘bed’ to ‘rubbish scattered untidily’. It goes back ultimately to Latin lectus ‘bed’, a distant relative of English lie and source of French lit ‘bed’ (which forms the final syllable of English coverlet [13], etymologically ‘bed-cover’). From lectus was derived medieval Latin lectria, which passed into English via Old French litiere and Anglo-Norman litere ‘bed’. This original sense was soon extended in English to a ‘portable conveyance or stretcher’, which still survives, just, as an archaism, but the word’s main modern sense, which first emerged fully in the 18th century, derives from the notion of scattering straw over the floor for bedding.

COVERLET

little [OE] Little goes back to the prehistoric West Germanic base *lut-, which also produced Dutch luttel and may have been the source of the Old English verb ltan ‘bow down’. Some have detected a link with Old English lot ‘deceit’, Old Norse lýta ‘dishonour, blame’, Russian ludit’ ‘deceive’, and Serbo-Croat lud ‘foolish’.

liturgy [16] Etymologically, liturgy means ‘public performance’. It comes via late Latin lturgia from Greek leitourgi‘public service or worship’. This was a derivative of leitourgós ‘public servant’, hence ‘priest’, a compound formed from leit-, the stem of lós ‘people, multitude’ (from which English gets layman), and érgon ‘work, action’ (source of English energy).

ENERGY, LAITY, LAY

live [OE] Modern English live represents a conflation of two Old English verbs, libban and lifian, both of which go back ultimately to the same prehistoric Germanic source, *lib-‘remain, continue’. Variants of this produced leave ‘depart’ and life. The adjective live [16] is a reduced form of alive, which derived from life.

LIFE

livid see SLOE

lizard [14] Lizard goes back to Latin lacertus or lacerta, words of unknown origin. It reached English via Old French lesard. The Latin word was used for ‘muscle’ as well as ‘lizard’, perhaps because the ripple of a muscle beneath the skin reminded people of a lizard’s movement (an exactly parallel development links mouse and muscle). And in heavily disguised form, owing to a detour via Arabic, alligator is the same word.

ALLIGATOR

load [OE] Load originally meant ‘way, course’ and ‘conveyance, carriage’. It goes back to prehistoric Germanic *laith, which also lies behind English lead ‘conduct’. Not until the 13th century did it begin to move over to its current sense ‘burden’, under the direct influence of lade [OE] (a verb of Germanic origin which now survives mainly in its past participial adjective laden and the derived noun ladle [OE]).

The word’s original sense ‘way’ is preserved in lodestar [14], etymologically a ‘guiding star’, and lodestone [16], likewise a ‘guiding stone’, named from its use as a compass.

LADEN, LEAD

loaf English has two words loaf. By far the older is ‘portion of bread’ [OE], which goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlaibaz. This also produced German laib and Danish lev ‘loaf’, and was borrowed, originally into Gothic, from an Old Slavic chleb (source of modern Russian and Polish chleb ‘bread, loaf’). Heavily disguised, loaf forms part of both lady and lord (which etymologically mean respectively ‘loaf-kneader’ and ‘loaf-guardian’), and it also contributed the first syllable to Lammas [OE], literally ‘loaf-mass’.

The verb loaf ‘dawdle, mooch’ [19] seems to have been a back-formation from loafer, which was probably adapted in 19th-century American English from German landläufer ‘vagabond’, a compound of land ‘land’ and läufer ‘runner’ (to which English leap is related).

LADY, LORD; LEAP

loam see LIME

loan [13] Old English had a noun ln, a close relative of the verb lnan (precursor of modern English lend). It meant ‘gift’, but it died out before the Middle English period, and was replaced by the related Old Norse lán, which has become modern English loan. Both go back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *loiq, *leiq-, *liq-, which also produced Greek leípein ‘leave’ (source of English ellipse) and Latin linquere ‘leave’ (source of English delinquent, relic, and relinquish).

DELINQUENT, LEND, RELIC, RELINQUISH

loathe [OE] Loathe originated as a derivative of the adjective loath or loth [OE]. This originally meant ‘hostile’ or ‘loathsome’, and goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *laithaz, which also produced Swedish led ‘fed up’ and German leid ‘sorrow’, and was borrowed into the Romance languages, giving French laid and Italian laido ‘ugly’.

lobby see LODGE

lobe [16] Greek lobós denoted ‘something round’, such as the circular part of the ear or the liver, or a round seed pod. It came from a prehistoric *logwós, a close relative of which produced Latin legmen ‘seed pod’ (source of English legume [17]). Lobós was borrowed into late Latin as lobus, and from there made its way into English.

LEGUME

lobster [OE] The Latin word locusta denoted both the voracious grasshopper, the ‘locust’, and the ‘lobster’ or similar crustaceans, such as the crayfish (if, as has been suggested, the word is related to Greek lkan ‘jump’, then presumably the ‘grasshopper’ sense was primary, and the ‘lobster’ application arose from some supposed resemblance between the two creatures). English has borrowed the Latin word twice. Most recently it came in the easily recognizable guise locust [13], but lobster too goes back to the same source. The radical change of form may be due to the influence of the Old English word loppe ‘spider’ – the Old English precursor of lobster was loppestre or lopystre.

LOCUST

local [15] Latin locus meant ‘place’ (it became in due course French lieu, acquired by English in the 13th century, and was itself adopted into English as a mathematical term in the 18th century). From it was derived the verb locre ‘place’, source of English locate [18] and location [16], and the post-classical adjective loclis, from which English gets local. The noun locale is a mock frenchification of an earlier local [18], an adoption of the French use of the adjective local as a noun.

LIEU, LOCOMOTIVE, LOCUS

lock [OE] English has two words lock. The one meaning ‘fastening mechanism’ goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *luk-or *lk-, denoting ‘close’, which also produced German loch ‘hole’ and Swedish lock ‘lid’. Closely related are locker [15], etymologically a ‘box with a lock’, and locket [14], which was acquired from Old French locquet, a diminutive form of loc (which itself was a borrowing from Germanic *luk-).

Lock ‘piece of hair’ goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European *lug-, which denoted ‘bending’. Its Germanic relatives include German locke, Dutch and Danish lok, and Swedish lock.

locomotive [17] Locomotive denotes etymologically ‘moving by change of place’. It is an anglicization of modern Latin locmtvus, a compound formed from locus ‘place’ and mtvus ‘causing to move’ (source of English motive). Originally it was used strictly as an adjective, and it was not until the early 19th century that the present-day noun use (which began life as an abbreviation of locomotive engine) emerged.

locust see LOBSTER

lodestone see LOAD

lodge [13] The distant ancestor of lodge was Germanic *laubja ‘shelter’, which may well have been a derivative of *laubam ‘leaf’ (source of English leaf) – the underlying idea being of a sheltered place formed by or constructed from leafy branches. German laube ‘summer-house, covered way’ comes from the same source. Medieval Latin took over the Germanic form as laubia or lobia (from which English gets lobby [16]), and passed it on via Old French loge to English in the form lodge.

LEAF, LOBBY

loft [OE] The notion underlying loft is of being ‘high up in the air’ – and indeed originally loft, like its close German relative luft, meant ‘air’. Not until the 13th century do we find it being used in English for ‘upper room’ (although in fact its source, Old Norse lopt, had both meanings). All these words go back to a common ancestor, prehistoric Germanic *luftuz ‘air, sky’. From this was derived a verb *luftjan, which, again via Old Norse, has given English lift [13] (the use of the derived noun for an ‘elevator’, incidentally, dates from the mid 19th century).

LIFT

log [14] Log is a mystery word. It first turns up (in the sense ‘felled timber’) towards the end of the 14th century, but it has no ascertainable relatives in any other language. Nor is it altogether clear how the sense ‘ship’s record’ came about. It was inspired by the use of log for a thin piece of wood floated in the water from a line to determine the speed of a ship, but some etymologists have speculated that this is not the same word as log ‘piece of timber’, but was adapted from Arabic lauh ‘tablet’.

logarithm [17] Greek lógos had a remarkably wide spread of meanings, ranging from ‘speech, saying’ to ‘reason, reckoning, calculation’, and ‘ratio’. The more ‘verbal’ end of its spectrum has given English the suffixes -logue and -logy (as in dialogue, tautology, etc), while the ‘reasoning’ component has contributed logic [14] (from the Greek derivative logik), logistic [17] (from the Greek derivative logistikós ‘of calculation’), and logarithm, coined in the early 17th century by the English mathematician John Napier from Greek logós ‘ratio’ and arithmós ‘number’ (source of English arithmetic [13]).

ARITHMETIC, LOGIC, LOGISTIC

loggerhead [16] Loggerhead originally meant much the same as blockhead – a stupid person with a block of wood for a head (in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1588), Berowne calls Costard a ‘whoreson loggerhead’). The first part of it probably represents logger ‘block for hobbling a horse’, which in turn was based on log, but how it came to be used in the phrase at loggerheads, meaning ‘in conflict’ and first recorded in 1831, is unclear. Perhaps the underlying image is of two stupid people having an in-your-face argument, but loggerhead was also used over the centuries for various bulbous-ended objects, including a long-handled tool for melting pitch, and it could be that a fight is being invoked in which these fearsome articles are being used as weapons.

loin [14] Loin has had a circuitous history. Its distant ancestor was probably Germanic, but it was borrowed early on into Latin as lumbus ‘loin’ (source of English lumbar [17], lumbago [17], and the numbles or umbles which became the humble of humble pie). Lumbus passed via Vulgar Latin *lumbia into Old French as longe. This had an eastern dialectal form loigne, which English acquired as loin.

HUMBLE PIE, LUMBAGO, LUMBAR

lonely [16] Lonely is a derivative of lone [14], itself a truncated form of alone. Another coinage based on lone is lonesome [17].

long [OE] Long goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *langgaz, which also produced German, Dutch, and Danish lang and Swedish lång. It is presumably related to Latin longus ‘long’ (source of French long, Italian lungo, and Romanian lung) but quite how has not been established. The derived verb long is of equal antiquity, and originally meant simply ‘grow long’; the current sense ‘yearn’ developed via ‘seem long’. Derived forms, more or less heavily disguised, include belong, Lent, linger, lunge, and purloin [15], etymologically ‘take a long way away’, hence ‘remove’.

BELONG, LENGTH, LENT, LINGER, LUNGE, PURLOIN

longitude see LATITUDE

loo [20] Loo presents one of the more celebrated puzzles of English etymology. Not the least of its problematical points is that there is no reliable evidence of its existence before the 1920s, whereas most of its suggested sources have a more dated air than that. Amongst them, the most widely touted is of course gardy loo!, a shout of warning (based on French gardez l’eau ‘beware of the water’) supposedly used when emptying chamber pots from upper-storey windows in the days before modern plumbing; but that is chronologically most unlikely. Other possibilities are that it is short for Waterloo, which was a trade name for cast-iron lavatory cisterns in the early part of the 20th century (‘O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset’, James Joyce, Ulysses 1922), and that it comes from louvre, from the use of slatted screens for a makeshift lavatory. But perhaps the likeliest explanation is that it derives from French lieux d’aisances, literally ‘places of ease’, hence ‘lavatory’ (perhaps picked up by British servicemen in France during World War I).

look [OE] For such a common word, look is surprisingly isolated. It goes back to prehistoric West Germanic *lkjan, which has no other descendants in the modern Germanic languages, and its only distant relative is the German verb lugen ‘show, be visible’.

loose [13] Loose is one of a large family of words that go back ultimately to Indo-European *lau-, *leu-, *lu-, which denoted ‘undoing’. It includes (via Greek) analyse and paralyse, (via Latin) dissolve and solution, and (via Germanic) lose and the suffix -less. Loose itself was borrowed from Old Norse laus, which was descended from a prehistoric Germanic *lausaz.

ANALYSE, DISSOLVE, LOSE, PARALYSE, SOLUTION

lope see LEAP

loquacious see VENTRILOQUIST

lord [OE] It is a measure of the centrality of bread to human society that the word lord denotes etymologically ‘guardian of the loaf’. It goes back to a primitive Old English *khlaibward, a compound formed from *khlaib ‘loaf’ and *ward ‘guardian, keeper’ (ancestor of modern English ward). This gradually developed in Old English via hlfweard to hlford, and in the 14th century it lost its middle /v/ to become the single-syllable word we know today.

Lady was likewise originally based on the word loaf.

GUARD, LOAF, WARD

lore see LEARN

lorry [19] The first record we have of the word lorry is from the northwest of England in the early 1830s, when it denoted a ‘low wagon’ (it was often used for railway wagons). The modern application to a motor vehicle emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. It is not clear where it came from, although it has been speculated that it was based on the personal name Laurie (perhaps someone called Laurie invented the vehicle). Another possibility is some connection with the Northern dialect verb lurry ‘pull’.

lose [OE] The verb lose originated as a derivative of the Old English noun los ‘loss’, which went back ultimately to the same Indo-European source (*lau-, *leu-, lu-) as produced English loose and the suffixless. In Old English it was losian, which eventually ousted the original losan to become the only verb for ‘lose’. The noun los died out before the Middle English period, and was replaced by loss [14], probably a derivative of the past participle lost. The past participle of losan ‘lose’ was loren, which survives in forlorn and love-lorn.

LOOSE

lot [OE] Lot goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlut-, which appears to have denoted the use of objects to make decisions by chance (Old English hlot was used for such an object). The first inklings of the modern range of senses did not emerge until the 18th century, when lot began to be used for a ‘set of things’. ‘Large number, many’ followed in the 19th century. The Germanic word was borrowed into the Romance languages, and of its descendants English has acquired allot [16] (from Old French) and lotto [18] (from Italian). Lottery [16] comes from the Dutch derivative loterij.

ALLOT, LOTTERY, LOTTO

loth see LOATHE

loud [OE] The underlying meaning of loud is ‘heard, audible’ – for it goes back ultimately to an Indo-European *klu- ‘hear’ (source also of English listen). The past participial form based on this, *kltós, passed into prehistoric West Germanic as *khluthaz, which has since differentiated into German laut, Dutch luid, and English loud.

LISTEN

lounge [16] It is the verb lounge (originally ‘move indolently’) which came first; its application as a noun to a ‘room where one can sit and take one’s ease’ came later, in the 18th century. It is not at all clear where the word came from, but some have linked it with the long obsolete noun lungis, which denoted both a ‘gangling foolish fellow’ and ‘someone who is slow or dilatory at doing things’. This was borrowed in the 16th century from French longis, which was apparently a generic application of Longnus, the name of the Roman centurion who pierced Christ’s side with a spear as he was hanging on the cross.

love [OE] The word love goes back to an Indo-European *leubh-, which has spawned a huge lexical progeny: not just words for ‘love’ (love’s Germanic relatives, such as German liebe and Dutch liefde, as well as the archaic English lief ‘dear’ [OE] and Latin libd‘strong desire’, source of English libidinous [15]) but also words for ‘praise’ (German lob and Dutch lof) and ‘belief’ (German glauben, Dutch gelooven, English believe). The sense ‘find pleasing’ is primary; it subsequently developed to ‘praise’ and, probably via ‘be satisfied with’, to ‘trust, believe’.

The derivative lovely [OE] originally meant ‘affectionate’ and ‘lovable’; the modern sense ‘beautiful’ did not develop until the late 13th century.

BELIEVE, LEAVE, LIEF

low English has two words low, of which surprisingly the ‘noise made by cattle’ [OE] is the older. It goes back ultimately to the onomatopoeic Indo-European base *kl-. This also produced Latin clrus (which originally meant ‘loud’, and gave English clear and declare), clmre ‘cry out’ (source of English acclaim, claim, exclaim, etc), and calre ‘proclaim, summon’ (source of English council). It produced a prehistoric Germanic *khl-, whose only survivor other than English low is Dutch loeien.

Low ‘not high’ [12] was borrowed from Old Norse lágr (source also of Swedish låg ‘low’). This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lgjaz, which was derived from the same base as produced the English verb lie ‘recline’.

ACCLAIM, CLAIM, CLEAR, COUNCIL, EXCLAIM; LIE

loyal [16] Loyal, ultimately the same word as legal, has a double history in English. It was originally acquired in the 13th century as leal. This came from Anglo-Norman leal, a descendant of Latin legalis ‘legal’. Then in the 16th century it was reborrowed from the modern French form loyal. The semantic link is ‘faithfully carrying out (legal) obligations’.

LEGAL

lubricate see SLIP

lucid see LIGHT

lucifer see LIGHT

luck [15] The antecedents of luck are not at all clear. Its likeliest source is Low German luk. This is clearly a close relative of modern Dutch geluk, whose prefix ge- is found also in Middle High German gelücke (source of modern German glück ‘good fortune, happiness’). But where the element lu(c)k came from is not known.

Luddite [19] The original Luddites, in the 1810s, were members of organized bands of working men who were opposed to the new factory methods of production (foreseeing – quite correctly – that the traditional ways which gave them employment would be destroyed by the new ones) and went around the country, mainly in the Midlands and Northern England, breaking up manufacturing machinery. They were named after Ned Ludd, a possibly apocryphal Leicestershire farm worker who around 1779 supposedly rushed into a stocking-maker’s house in an insane rage and smashed up two stocking frames. Thereafter, the story continues, whenever a stocking frame suffered damage the saying would be ‘Ludd must have been here!’. The ringleaders of the disturbances in the 1810s were commonly nicknamed ‘Captain Ludd’ or ‘King Ludd’. The modern application of the word to an opponent of technological or industrial change appears to date from the 1960s.

ludicrous see ILLUSION

luff see ALOOF

lug English has three words lug, two of them possibly connected. The verb, ‘pull’ [14], may be related to Swedish lugga ‘pull someone’s hair’, suggesting a Scandinavian origin. And it has been pointed out that the various meanings of the noun lug [15], such as ‘ear’ and ‘projecting handle’, share a common semantic element ‘capable of being held (and pulled)’, so the noun may have been derived from the verb. The lug- of lugworm [17] may be of Celtic origin.

lukewarm [14] Lukewarm is a compound adjective based on the now obsolete Middle English luke ‘tepid’. It is not altogether clear where this came from, but it is generally assumed to be a derivative of the also now obsolete lew ‘(fairly) warm’, with perhaps a diminutive suffix. Lew goes back to an Old English hlow ‘warm’, a variant of which became modern English lee ‘shelter’. It is related to Latin calor ‘heat’ (source of English calorie), calidus ‘hot’ (source of English caudle, cauldron, and chowder), and calere ‘be hot’ (source of English nonchalant).

CALORIE, CAULDRON, CHOWDER, LEE, NONCHALANT

lull [14] There are several words similar to lull in various Germanic languages, including Swedish lulla ‘lull’ and Dutch lullen ‘prattle’, but it is not clear to what extent they are interconnected. But either individually or collectively they all no doubt go back ultimately to a repitition of the syllable lu or la, used in singing a baby to sleep. Lullaby was coined from lull in the 16th century, perhaps using the final syllable of goodbye.

lumbago see LOIN

lumbar see LOIN

lumber [14] Swedish has a dialectal verb loma ‘move heavily’, which is the only clue we have to the antecedents of the otherwise mysterious English verb lumber. The noun, too, which first appears in the 16th century, is difficult to account for. In the absence of any other convincing candidates, it is presumed to have been derived from the verb (its earliest recorded sense is ‘useless or inconvenient articles’, plausibly close to the verb; ‘cut timber’ did not emerge until the 17th century, in North America).

luminous see LIGHT

lump [13] The origins of lump are obscure. It presumably emerged from an imperfectly recorded medieval Germanic substratum of words for ‘coarse or shapeless things’ (also represented perhaps by Low German lump ‘coarse, heavy’ and Dutch lomp ‘rag’), but where this began is not known. The lump of like it or lump it [19] is a different word, of even more mysterious ancestry.

lunar [17] Latin lna ‘moon’ came from an Indo-European base which also produced English light (not to mention a range of Latin ‘light’-words, such as lx and lmen, which have given English illustrate, lucid, luminous, lustre, etc). It had two adjectival derivatives: lnris, which simply meant ‘of the moon’, and was borrowed by English as lunar; and lnticus. This was originally used for ‘living on the moon’, but subsequently came to employed in the sense ‘crazy’, from the notion that certain sorts of periodic madness were caused by the phases of the moon. English acquired it via Old French lunatique as lunatic [13].

ILLUSTRATE, LIGHT, LUMINOUS, LUNATIC, LUSTRE

lunch [16] When lunch first appeared on the scene, at the end of the 16th century, it was used for a ‘slice or hunk of food’ (‘He shall take bread and cut it into little lunches into a pan with cheese’, Richard Surfleet, Country Farm 1600). It appears to have been borrowed from Spanish lonja ‘slice’. The roughly contemporaneous luncheon, probably just an arbitrary lengthening of lunch, came to be used in the early 17th century for a ‘snack’ (the link with ‘hunk or piece of food’ is obvious), and eventually for a ‘light meal’. Lunch returned to the language in this sense at the beginning of the 19th century, as an abbreviation of luncheon.

lung [OE] Lungs, insubstantial air-filled sacs, got their name because they weigh so little. It comes ultimately from Indo-European *lnggh-, a variant of which produced English light ‘not heavy’. In prehistoric Germanic this became *lungg-, which over the centuries has differentiated to German lunge, Dutch long, Swedish lunga, and English lung. The similarly motivated use of the word lights for ‘lungs’ dates from the 12th century; it is now restricted to ‘animals’ lungs used as food’, but it was formerly a general term.

LIGHT

lunge [18] ‘Length’ is the etymological notion underlying the word lunge. It comes ultimately from French allonger ‘lengthen’, a verb based on the adjective long ‘long’. Its fencing application derived, in French, from the idea of ‘extending one’s sword to strike a blow’. It was originally borrowed into English in the 17th century as allonge, but this was soon shortened to lunge.

lupin see WOLF

lurch English has two words lurch, both with rather obscure histories. The verb, ‘stagger’ [19], appears to come from an earlier lee-lurch, which in turn may have been an alteration of an 18th-century nautical term lee-latch, denoting ‘drifting to leeward’. The latch element may have come from French lâcher ‘let go’.

The lurch of leave someone in the lurch [16] originated as a term in backgammon, denoting a ‘defeat’, ‘low score’, or ‘position of disadvantage’. It was borrowed from French lourche, which probably goes back to Middle High German lurz ‘left’, hence ‘wrong’, ‘defeat’.

lust [OE] Lust is a Germanic word; it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lust-, which as well as English lust had produced German lust (now used for ‘pleasure’ rather than ‘desire’). Swedish lust ‘inclination, pleasure, desire’ was borrowed from Low German. From the same Germanic ancestor came the now archaic verb list ‘desire’, source of listless. And it is possible that lascivious [15], acquired from late Latin lascvisus, may ultimately be related.

LASCIVIOUS, LISTLESS

lustre see LIGHT

luxury [14] Luxury was originally a pejorative word, denoting ‘sinful self-indulgence’. Not until the 17th century did it begin to acquire its positive modern connotations of costliness, comfort, and desirability. It came via Old French from Latin luxuria ‘excess’, a derivative of luxus ‘excess, abundance, extravagance’. The Latin derived verb luxurire ‘grow profusely’ has given English luxuriant [16] and luxuriate [17].

lycanthropy see WOLF

lychgate see LIKE

lymph [17] Despite its Greek appearance, lymph comes, perhaps via French, from Latin. Its distant ancestor was Latin limpa or lumpa, which meant ‘water’. And that was the original sense of English lymph; not until the 18th century was it used for ‘clear bodily fluid’. The alteration of the Latin word to lympha appears to have been due to association with Greek númph ‘nymph’.

English limpid [17] comes from Latin limpidus ‘clear’, which may have been related to limpa.

lynch [19] This verb for ‘punishing someone without an official trial’ owes its existence to one William Lynch, a planter and justice of the peace of Pittsylvania, Virginia, USA, who at the beginning of the 19th century took it upon himself to set up unofficial tribunals to try suspects. His rough and ready method of administering justice was termed Lynch’s law, later lynch law, and the verb followed in the 1830s.

lynx [14] The lynx, a member of the cat family, probably gets its name from its clear sight. It comes via Latin lynx from Greek lúgx, which probably derived from the same Indo-European root (*leuk-) as produced English light and (via Latin) illuminate, illustrate, lucid, luminous, lunar, and lustre. A precedent for its application to ‘seeing’ is provided by Greek leússein ‘see’.

ILLUSTRATE, LIGHT, OUNCE