awe
Pronunciation
- UK: /ɔː/[1]
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
- A feeling of deep respect or wonder, often mixed with fear, inspired by something great, powerful or sacred.
- (archaic) The power to inspire such a feeling.
- (obsolete) dread or terror.
Verb
- To fill with awe: The size of the cathedral awed the visitors.
- To control or restrain by inspiring awe or fear.
Word family
Related words
- ail
References
- ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
- ^ 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
- ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
- ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
- ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
- ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
- ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
- ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press