Etymologically
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bane

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English bane, also ban, bayn and bone,[2] inherited from Old English bana (“killer, slayer, murderer”), also bona,[3][4][5][6] from Proto-Germanic *banô.[1][4][6] Its cognates are Old Saxon bano, Old Frisian bona, Old High German bano, Middle High German bane and Old Norse bani, with Swedish bane and Danish bane, meaning "death, murder" or "murderer".[6][5][7][3] It is related to benn (“wound”) and Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌽𐌾𐌰 (banja, “stroke, wound”).[6][4][7][8] Further back the origin is uncertain.[4][9][10] The American Heritage Dictionary refers it to Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰen-,[11] Köbler compares Proto-Indo-European *bʰen- (“to strike, wound”), after Pokorny,[12] Klein and Partridge compare Avestan banta (“ill”),[7][13] and Weekley connected it with Ancient Greek φόνος (phónos, “murder”).[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English bana was a killer or murderer, human, animal or object, and also the devil.[3][4] The OED's first record of this sense is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the annal for 755,[6] and Beowulf uses it of weapons that cause death, as when swords became the death of Heardred.[3][6] Barnhart dates the word to about 725, in Beowulf.[5]

Semantic evolution

The word moved from the killer to the thing that kills and to death itself: Hoad dates "death, destruction" to the 13th century, "poison" to the 14th and "cause of ruin or trouble" to the 16th.[15] The sense "murder, death", from about 1175, survived into the 17th century mainly in phrases such as take one's bane, to catch one's death.[6] Poison is recorded from 1398, in Trevisa,[6] and lives on in the names of poisonous plants such as henbane, dogbane and leopard's bane.[6][16] Johnson (1755) gave "poison" as the first sense, quoting Ben Jonson's Catiline and Milton.[17] The modern sense, whatever ruins or plagues something, first appears in 1577, in Harrison's Description of England, and the OED calls it the ordinary sense;[6][4] the poetic "ruin, woe" is recorded from about 1400.[6] The verb, first "to kill, especially by poison" (1578), then "to harm", was formed from the noun.[6][8] In the dialects of Yorkshire, Essex, Wiltshire and Somerset the noun meant poison or ruin, and in the West Country and Westmorland the verb meant to give sheep the rot;[18] the OED records bane for that liver disease of sheep from 1859.[6] In early 20th-century British slang the bane was brandy.[19]

Timeline

  • c. 725 – a slayer, a cause of death, in Beowulf.[5][6]
  • c. 1175 – murder, death, destruction (obsolete by 1655).[6]
  • 1398 – poison, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew.[6]
  • c. 1400 – ruin, woe, chiefly in poetry.[6]
  • 1577 – something that ruins or plagues; the curse of something.[6] Etymonline dates this sense to the 1570s.[4]
  • 1578 – verb, to kill, especially by poison (obsolete by 1600).[6][8]
  • 1587 – verb, to harm or injure.[6]
  • 1859 – a liver disease of sheep, the rot.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A cause of constant trouble, misery or annoyance: the bane of one's life.[16][8][6]
  2. Something that causes death or destruction.[16][8]
  3. A deadly poison; now mainly in plant and substance names such as ratsbane.[16][6][8]
  4. (archaic) Ruin, destruction or woe.[16][6]
  5. (obsolete, Old English–1691) A slayer or murderer.[6][8]

Verb

  1. (archaic) To harm or injure.[8][6]
  2. (obsolete, 1578–1600) To kill, especially by poison.[6][8]

Word family

  • bugbane
  • cowbane
  • fleabane
  • ratsbane
  • baneful
  • henbane
  • dogbane
  • wolfsbane

Usage notes

In Scots bane is also the word for bone, a northern Middle English form of Old English bān, recorded from 1578; it is not connected with this word.[8][18]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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 Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  10. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  12. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  13. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  15. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  16. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  18. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  19. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com