Etymologically
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anger

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: UK /ˈæŋ.ɡə/, US /ˈæŋ.ɡɚ/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English anger, angre, borrowed from Old Norse angr (“grief, sorrow, affliction”), with the verb from angra (“to grieve, vex”),[2][3][4][5] from Proto-Germanic *angaz, the source also of Old English enge “narrow”, German eng and Gothic aggwus,[2][3][4] from Proto-Indo-European *angh- (“tight, painfully constricted”), the source also of Latin angere “to squeeze, choke” and Greek ánchein “to strangle”.[2][3] It is related to anguish, anxiety and to German Angst.[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb, to irritate or distress: about 1200, in the Ormulum.[3][2] The noun, distress, affliction, grief: about 1250.[6][3] The Norse senses came first, and the current ones date from late Middle English.[5][7]

Semantic evolution

Hostility and ill will are from the mid-13th century,[2] and rage or wrath by the early 14th, about 1325 in the OED.[2][6] Wedgwood explained the change by the idea of injury as pressure, transferred to the resentment that injury arouses in the victim.[2] The verb in the sense “to make angry” is from the late 14th century.[2][8] In Middle English the word also meant physical pain or inflammation (1377),[6] a sense kept in Cumberland and Westmorland dialect.[9]

Timeline

  • c. 1200 – verb, to distress.[3][2]
  • c. 1250 – noun, affliction.[6]
  • c. 1325 – rage, wrath.[6]
  • 1377 – physical pain.[6]
  • late 14th century – to make angry.[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A strong feeling of displeasure and hostility; rage or wrath.

Verb

  1. To make someone angry.

Word family

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)