brimstone

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English brimston, also brinston,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English brynstān,^[3][5][6][7] probably formed from Old English bryne (“burning”) + stān (“stone”).^[6][8][9] The OED, Barnhart and Etymonline instead take the first element as a stem of the verb that gave burn,^[3][10][11] which Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace to Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰer- (“to heat, warm”).^[11][5] Compare Old Norse brennisteinn (“sulfur”),^[3][9][12] which Hoad takes as the cause of the common Middle English variant brenston.^[9] The same formation means "amber" in Middle Dutch bernsteen, Dutch barnsteen and German Bernstein,^[3][10] and Barnhart and Etymonline give the Old Norse word that meaning too.^[10][11] Middle English spelling varied widely: the two texts of the Wycliffite Bible alone have brenstoon, brynston, brumston and brimstoon.^[3] The OED thinks the change to “brim-” may reflect association with the adjective brim or breme (“fierce”),^[3][13] and Hoad dates the forms in “brim-” to about 1300,^[9] Barnhart to about 1250.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Sulfur: Old English brynstān in a 12th-century manuscript, dated 1125 by Barnhart.^[10][3] The OED's first quotation for the noun in its current sense is from the Cursor Mundi, before 1300.^[3]

Semantic evolution

For centuries this was the ordinary English name of the mineral sulfur: Chaucer uses it nine times,^[14] and Trevisa says that it is called sulphur.^[2] It was tied early to the Bible's fire from heaven, as in Wycliffe's "brenstoon and fier" of 1382 on Sodom and Gomorrah,^[11] and to the torments of hell, through the "lake of fire burning with brimstone" in Revelation.^[15][5] Johnson (1755) still defined it simply as sulphur,^[16] but it is now an old word kept mostly for biblical language and for fire and brimstone.^[3][11][17] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also records it as a modifier, as in a brimstone preacher.^[4] From the 17th century it could be an insult for a violent or impudent woman or a prostitute;^[18][3][8] Green's Dictionary of Slang has brimstone-barrel in 1665, and the OED brimstone for a virago in 1751.^[18][3] In dialect it stayed a word of abuse in Scotland, Yorkshire and the Isle of Wight, and in London a match-seller was an old brimstone.^[19] The yellow butterfly takes its name from the colour.^[3][8]

Timeline

• 1125 – Old English brynstān, sulfur.^[10]
• c. 1250 – the form brimeston.^[10]
• before 1300 – sulfur, as the common name, in the Cursor Mundi.^[3]
• 1382 – brenstoon, the fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, in the Wycliffite Bible.^[11][3]
• before 1616 – figurative, fire or passion, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.^[3][8]
• 1665 – an insult for a woman, as brimstone-barrel.^[18]
• 1751 – a virago.^[3]
• 1824 – a yellow butterfly.^[3] The Shorter Oxford dates the butterfly to the late 17th century.^[8]
• 1866 – vegetable brimstone, the flammable spores of Lycopodium.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic) Sulfur, especially as burning in hell: The preacher warned of fire and brimstone.^{[17][5][20][3]}
2. Fierce preaching about damnation, or damnation itself, especially in fire and brimstone.^[5][4]
3. A large butterfly of the Old World, Gonepteryx rhamni, the male of which is bright yellow.^{[17][20][4][3]}
4. (archaic) A scolding or violent woman; a virago.^{[17][4][3][8]}

Word family

• brimstony
• fire and brimstone

Related words

• burn
• stone

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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 i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
15. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
18. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
19. ^ 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)
20. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press