appendage

Etymology

It is formed from English append + -age.^[2][3][4][5] The OED compares equipage and suggests that the sense was perhaps influenced by appanage.^[2] Johnson labelled the word French.^[6] Append is from Latin appendō (“to hang on, weigh out”), perhaps through French.^[2][7] The Latin verb is formed from ad- (“to”) and a verb that the OED gives as pendeō (“to hang”)^[2] and Etymonline and Merriam-Webster Unabridged as pendō (“to hang, weigh”).^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

An immaterial addition or accompaniment: 1649, in Taylor's Great Exemplar.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to 1647,^[7] and Etymonline and Dictionary.com to the 1640s.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

The word first named additions in general, immaterial as well as material, and it could mean an appendix to a book, as in Hobbes (1651).^[2] Johnson (1755) stresses that an appendage is not necessary to the essence of the thing it is added to, like a portico on a house, and quotes Taylor: "Modesty is the appendage of sobriety".^[6] Natural history adopted it for a subordinate organ in the late 18th century,^[2] and in the 19th it was transferred to people who merely go along with someone else.^[2][7] Shaw's "a mere appendage of a big American concern", quoted in the Shorter Oxford, shows the same slighting use of a firm.^[4]

Timeline

• 1649 – something immaterial added or accompanying.^[2]
• 1651 – an appendix to a book or document (now obsolete), in Hobbes.^[2]
• 1694 – an addition to territory or property.^[2]
• 1713 – a material thing attached or added, in Derham.^[2]
• 1785 – in natural history, a subordinate organ.^[2]
• 1838 – of a person.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Something attached or added to a larger thing, and usually subordinate or not essential to it; an adjunct: The little museum had become an appendage of the town library.^[8][7][4]
2. (zoology) An organ or part projecting from the body, such as a limb of an arthropod.^[8][2]
3. (botany) A subsidiary part of a plant, such as a branch or leaf.^[8]
4. A person who goes everywhere with or depends on another.^[7][2]

Word family

• appendaged
• unappendaged

Related words

• append
• appendix
• appanage

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins