bursa

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin bursa,^[2][3] a use of Medieval Latin bursa (“bag, purse”),^[4][5][6] shortened from the full term bursa mucosa (“mucus pouch”).^[7] The form goes back through Late Latin, where it was a variant of Late Latin byrsa (“hide”),^[7][8] to Ancient Greek βύρσα (búrsa, “hide, skin, wineskin”).^[4][8][7] Beekes calls the Greek noun a technical term without an etymology, perhaps Pre-Greek as Furnée argued;^[9] Etymonline gives it as of unknown origin.^[7] Purse, bursar and reimburse come from the same Latin source,^[10] as do bourse and burse.^[7][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A pouch-shaped cavity of the body: Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates this sense to 1734.^[2] Etymonline finds it as an English word in physiology by 1788,^[7] and the OED's first quotation, for the lubricating sac beside a tendon, is of 1803, in the Medical & Physical Journal.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The Greek noun originally meant skin or leather, hence a wineskin or bag;^[10] anatomy then applied the Latin "bag" to a sac in the body.^[2][7] The adjective bursal is recorded from 1751,^[7] earlier than the OED's first quotation for the noun.^[4] The term has since widened in zoology to any saclike structure,^[5][2] and the bursa of Fabricius, a glandular sac in birds, bears the Latinized name of the Italian anatomist Girolamo Fabrici (1533–1619).^[11] Separately, the same Latin word names a medieval students' residence, in English from an 1831 article by W. Hamilton in the Edinburgh Review, beside the older burse for a college or academic hall.^[4][2]

Timeline

• 1734 – a pouch-shaped cavity of the body.^[2] The OED's first quotation, for a synovial sac, is of 1803.^[4]
• 1831 – a residence hall at a medieval university.^[4][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small sac filled with fluid that lessens friction between moving parts of the body, as between a tendon and a bone at a joint.^{[5][2][11][4]}
2. Any pouch-shaped cavity or saclike structure of the body, as the bursa copulatrix or, in birds, the bursa of Fabricius.^[5][2][11]
3. (historical) A hall of residence for students at a medieval university.^[2][4]

Word family

• bursal
• bursiform
• bursitis
• bursa of Fabricius

Related words

• bursar
• bursary
• disburse
• reimburse
• purse
• bourse
• burse

Usage notes

The plural is bursae or bursas.^[2][5]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press