caliber

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French calibre,^[2][3][4] recorded in French by the mid-16th century and perhaps the late 15th.^[4] Most dictionaries trace the French word through Italian calibro^[5][3][6][7] or a Spanish form^[8][9] to an Arabic word meaning a mould for casting metal or a shoemaker's last,^{[5][3][8][9][10]} which is in turn often derived from Ancient Greek καλόπους (kālópous, “shoemaker's last”), literally "wooden foot", from κᾶλον (kâlon, “wood”) and πούς (poús, “foot”).^{[5][3][11][10][12]} Ayto notes that others derive the Arabic word instead from a verb meaning "to turn, convert",^[10] as Hoad does.^[8] Barnhart objects that the Italian and Spanish words are first recorded in 1606 and 1594, later than the English (1588), and so are too late to be the links between the Arabic and the French.^[2][13] Etymonline cites “English Words of Arabic Ancestry” as finding no evidence at all for an Arabic source and preferring a French formation from Medieval Latin quā librā (“of what weight”), an idea first put forward by Mahn in the 19th century;^[4] Skeat and Chambers mention the same suggestion,^[14][15] and Weekley pointed to Cotgrave's spelling Middle French qualibre.^[16] Skeat himself called the origin unknown.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

Degree of merit, importance or social standing: 1567, the earliest sense in English, probably taken over from French.^[2][17][3] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date this sense, social standing or rank, to the mid 16th century.^[9][7]

Semantic evolution

The literal sense, the diameter of a bullet or cannonball and so the bore of a gun, is recorded from 1588;^[2][17] Etymonline dates the gun sense to the 1580s.^[4] The OED notes that the calibre of a gun decides the weight of its shot,^[17] and Word Origins suggests that because a gun's calibre decided its effectiveness, the word came to stand for personal qualities;^[18] the figurative sense of ability or weight of character grew beside the older one of rank, which is now obsolete.^[17][9] From the early 18th century the word was also used of the diameter of any round body, especially the inside of a tube.^[17][9] Johnson (1755) defined it only as the bore of a gun or the diameter of a bullet.^[19] The instrument called a calliper takes its name from an alteration of the word,^[10][18][20] and the 16th-century musket called a caliver is another variant of it.^[16] In the United States calibres are given in decimal parts of an inch, as in a .44-caliber revolver.^[4] The verb calibrate was formed from it in 1864.^[2]

Timeline

• 1567 – degree of merit or importance; social standing.^[2][17][3]
• 1588 – the diameter of a projectile; the bore of a gun.^[2][17]
• 1727–51 – the diameter of any round body, especially the inside of a tube.^[17]
• 1731 – verb, to measure the calibre of something.^[17]
• 1864 – the derived verb calibrate.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The inside diameter of the barrel of a firearm; its bore: a hunting rifle of small caliber.^[6][3]
2. The diameter of a bullet or shell.^[6][3]
3. The inside diameter of a tube, or the diameter of any round body.^[6][17]
4. Degree of ability, quality or worth: a surgeon of the highest caliber.^[6][3]
5. (obsolete) Social standing, rank or importance (from 1567).^[17][9]

Word family

• subcaliber

Related words

• calibrate
• calibration
• calliper
• caliver

Usage notes

Calibre is the usual British spelling and caliber the American one.^[6][11]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
14. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
16. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
18. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
19. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
20. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul