awe

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Norse agi (“fright, terror, discipline”),^[2][3][4][5] a word borrowed in the areas of Scandinavian settlement that spread from there and displaced the native eie, from ege (“fear, terror”).^[3][6][5] The Middle English spellings with gh came before those with u and w, as the guttural sound of the 13th-century word became w.^[7][2][6] Both the Norse and the Old English nouns go back to Proto-Germanic *agiz, which also gave Gothic 𐌰𐌲𐌹𐍃 (agis, “fear, anguish”) and Old High German agiso (“fright, terror”),^[2][8][7] and further to Proto-Indo-European *agʰ- (“to be depressed, be afraid”), the source of Ancient Greek ἄχος (ákhos, “pain, grief”) and of ail.^[2][8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Fear, terror or dread, with no reverence implied: c. 1175, in the Ormulum, as aghe.^[3][7] Etymonline dates that form to about 1200 and aue to about 1300.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The OED believes fear was the original sense, and that over later Middle English and the 16th century reverence and wonder became more and more prominent.^[3] Etymonline attributes this to its use in the Bible of the awe owed to God.^[2] The sense of fear mixed with reverence appears before 1400,^[3] and the change seems complete by the 18th century, when Johnson (1755) defined awe as "reverential fear; reverence".^[3][10] The bare sense "fear" died out by 1785.^[3] The phrase was first to stand awe of (c. 1300, in Havelok), then to stand in awe of (1483) and to be in awe of (1553).^[3][2] Chaucer used awe for fear and dread.^[11] The verb, to fill with awe or terror, was formed from the noun in the early 13th century;^[3][2] Old English had used its own verb, ēgan.^[2] Shock and awe was coined by the US analysts Harlan Ullman and James Wade in 1996 and became famous as the battle plan for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1175 – fear, terror (obsolete by 1785).^[3]
• c. 1225 – the verb, to fill with fear or awe.^[3]
• c. 1300 – to stand awe of.^[3][2]
• before 1400 – fear mixed with reverence or wonder.^[3]
• before 1425 – the power to inspire awe.^[3]
• 1483 – to stand in awe of.^[3]
• 1553 – to be in awe of.^[3]
• 1996 – shock and awe.^[12]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A feeling of deep respect or wonder, often mixed with fear, inspired by something great, powerful or sacred.
2. (archaic) The power to inspire such a feeling.
3. (obsolete) dread or terror.

Verb

1. To fill with awe: The size of the cathedral awed the visitors.
2. To control or restrain by inspiring awe or fear.

Word family

• awful
• awe-inspiring
• aweless
• awesome
• awestruck
• overawe
• awed

Related words

• ail

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ 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
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
7. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press