arouse

Etymology

It is formed from English a- + rouse,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} on the pattern of rise and arise, wake and awake.^{[2][5][6][8][9]} The dictionaries class the prefix differently: Etymonline glosses it "on", Merriam-Webster calls it perfective and Ayto intensive.^[3][7][10] The base is itself of unknown origin according to the OED and Ayto, a term of hawking that is often assumed to be French;^[2][10] Barnhart compares Old French rëuser (“to repel, push back”), which the OED finds too different in sense.^[9][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To wake or stir up: 1593, in Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI: "Loud howling wolves arouse the jades that drag the tragic melancholy night".^[10][9][7] The OED cites the play under the date before 1616 and the first folio of 1623,^[2] Etymonline gives the 1590s,^[3] and Dictionary.com 1585–95.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word arose when rouse had just spread from falconry and hunting to stirring up and waking people, in the 1580s and 1590s,^[9][3] and it began with those general senses.^[2] From 1730, in Thomson's Spring, it could take feelings and principles of action as its object, so that an emotion is aroused rather than a person.^[2][4] Johnson (1755) gives both uses: to wake from sleep, and to raise up or excite.^[12] An intransitive use, to wake up, is recorded from 1822.^[2][4] The sexual sense is treated by the OED from 1948, in Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.^[2] A noun arouse, an alarm, appears in Christina Rossetti in 1881,^[2] and the usual noun arousal dates from the mid-19th century.^[4]

Timeline

• 1593 – to wake from sleep or stir from inactivity.^[10][9][7]
• 1730 – to stir up feelings or principles of action.^[2]
• 1822 – intransitive, to wake up, to stir.^[2]
• 1881 – noun, an act of arousing, an alarm.^[2]
• 1948 – to excite sexually.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To bring someone out of sleep; to wake them: The dog's barking aroused the whole family.^[13][7][2]
2. To stir someone to action from a state of inactivity.^[7][2]
3. To call up a feeling or reaction; to provoke or stimulate: Her evasive answers aroused suspicion.^[13][2][4]
4. To excite someone sexually.^[7][2][4]
5. Intransitive: to wake up or stir.^[2][4]

Word family

• arousal
• arousability
• arousable
• arouser
• rearouse

Related words

• rouse

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 q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins