auricle

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English auricle,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French auricule,^[4][2] from Latin auricula (“ear, external ear”),^[2][3][5][6] a diminutive of auris (“ear”),^[5][6][3][7] from Proto-Indo-European *ous- (“ear”).^[3] Barnhart takes the sense "external ear", which appears in the 17th century, as a separate borrowing directly from Latin,^[4] and the OED, whose quotations begin only in 1650, derives the word from Latin and compares French auricule.^[5] It is related to ear.^[6][4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A chamber of the heart: probably before 1425, in a Middle English translation of Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie, which glosses the word: "be 2 auricles i. litel erez".^[2][4] The OED, in an entry not fully revised, begins with the external ear in 1650, in J. Bulwer's Anthropometamorphosis, and has the heart only from 1664.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The heart's chambers were named for their shape, traditionally said to resemble the ear of a dog, a bear or another animal.^[4][6][8] The sense of the external ear appears in the 1650s.^[4][6] From 1665 it also named ear-like parts of plants and shells.^[5] Johnson (1755) gave the external ear first and the two "appendages of the heart" second, "thus called from the resemblance they bear to the external ear".^[9] The Shorter Oxford now limits the heart sense to a small pouch on the atrium, and calls the chamber itself a former use,^[10] while the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Unabridged still equate the auricle with the atrium.^[3][8] The word was also used for an ear-shaped opening (1860, in Hawthorne) and for a kind of ear trumpet (1864, in Webster).^[5]

Timeline

• before 1425 – a chamber of the heart.^[2][4] The OED first records this sense in 1664.^[5]
• 1650 – the external ear, or its lower lobe.^[5]
• 1665 – an ear-like part of a plant or shell.^[5]
• 1860 – an ear-shaped opening.^[5]
• 1864 – an ear trumpet.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The outer projecting part of the ear; the pinna.^{[8][11][3][12]}
2. An atrium of the heart.^{[8][11][3][5]}
3. A small muscular pouch on the surface of an atrium of the heart.^[10][11][8]
4. (biology) An ear-shaped part or appendage, as at the base of a grass leaf blade or on the hinge of a bivalve shell.^{[11][8][3][5]}

Word family

• auricled

Related words

• auricula
• auricular
• ear
• oracle

Usage notes

Dictionary.com lists auricle and oracle as words that can be confused.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House