aquiline

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin aquilīnus (“of or like an eagle”),^[2][3][4][5] probably after French aquilin,^[6][7] recorded in the 16th century.^[2] The Latin adjective is from aquila (“eagle”) and -īnus.^[8][5] Etymonline calls the noun a word of uncertain origin.^[3] It is often explained as "the dark bird", from aquilus (“dark in hue, swarthy”),^[3][9][10] and de Vaan thinks the bird could have been named from the colour once the adjective had that meaning.^[11][3] He also prefers the Roman derivation of the colour word from aqua (“water”) to a derivation from the bird,^[11][3] which Klein accepts too.^[9] The Latin noun also gave eagle, through French.^[10][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Eagle-like, especially of a nose curved like an eagle's beak: 1646, in Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.^[2][8][5] Etymonline and Dictionary.com put it in the 1640s.^[3][13]

Semantic evolution

English took up the word mainly for long, hooked noses,^[3] and the plainer sense "of or belonging to an eagle" follows in the 1650s.^[2][3] Johnson (1755) defines it as resembling an eagle and, of the nose, hooked, quoting Dryden's "His nose was aquiline, his eyes were blue".^[14] Later writers extended it to other features, as in Burke's "penetrating aquiline eye", quoted in the Shorter Oxford.^[7]

Timeline

• 1646 – eagle-like; of the nose or features, curved like an eagle's beak.^[2][8][5]
• 1656 – of or belonging to an eagle, in Blount's Glossographia.^[2] Etymonline says the 1650s.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a nose or face: curved or hooked like an eagle's beak: The portrait shows a thin face and a sharply aquiline nose.^[15][8][2]
2. Of, belonging to or like an eagle.^[15][8][2]

Word family

• aquilinity

Related words

• eagle

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins