vengeful: Etymology
- craig8smiling
- Jul 2, 2022
- 1 min read
vengeful: Etymology
5 entries found.
Entries linking to vengeful
"avenge," c. 1300, from Old French vengier "revenge, avenge, punish," from Latin vindicare "avenge, vindicate" (see vindication). Related: Venged; venging.
word-forming element attached to nouns (and in modern English to verb stems) and meaning "full of, having, characterized by," also "amount or volume contained" (handful, bellyful); from Old English -full, -ful, which is full (adj.) become a suffix by being coalesced with a preceding noun, but originally a separate word. Cognate with German -voll, Old Norse -fullr, Danish -fuld. Most English -ful adjectives at one time or another had both passive ("full of x") and active ("causing x; full of occasion for x") senses. It is rare in Old English and Middle English, where full was much more commonly attached at the head of a word (for example Old English fulbrecan "to violate," fulslean "to kill outright," fulripod "mature;" Middle English had ful-comen "attain (a state), realize (a truth)," ful-lasting "durability," ful-thriven "complete, perfect," etc.).
1610s, "vengeful," from Latin vindicta "revenge" (see vindication) + -ive; or perhaps a shortening of vindicative based on the Latin word. From 1620s as "punitive, retributive," rather than personally vengeful or deliberately cruel. Related: Vindictively.
mid-15c., "vindictive, having vengeful intent," from Old French vindicatif (14c.) or directly from Medieval Latin vindicativus, from vindicat-, past participle stem of vindicare (see vindicate). From c. 1600 as "involving retribution or punishment," a sense "common in 17th cent." [OED].
Slav (n.)
late 14c., Sclave, from Medieval Latin Sclavus (c. 800), from Byzantine Greek Sklabos (c. 580), from Proto-Slavic *sloveninu "a Slav," probably related to *slovo "word, speech," which suggests the name originally identified a member of a speech community (compare Old Church Slavonic Nemici "Germans," related to nemu "dumb;" Greek heterophonos "foreign," literally "of different voice;" and Old English þeode, which meant both "race" and "language"). Max Vasmer, the authority for Slavic etymologies, rejects a connection to *slava "glory, fame," which, however, influenced Slav via folk etymology. This is the -slav in personal names (such as Russian Miroslav, literally "peaceful fame;" Mstislav "vengeful fame;" Jaroslav "famed for fury;" Czech Bohuslav "God's glory;" Latinized Wenceslas "having greater glory"), perhaps from PIE root *kleu- "to hear." In English, it was spelled Slave c. 1788-1866, influenced by French and German Slave. As an adjective from 1876.
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