candor

Forms

• candour (UK)

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin candor (“whiteness; purity, sincerity”),^[2][3][4][5] from candeō (“to shine, be white”),^[2][6][7] from Proto-Indo-European *kand- (“to shine”).^[2][6] Barnhart thinks Middle French candeur, recorded in 1488, may have influenced the English use,^[3] and other dictionaries bring in French as a source: the American Heritage Dictionary traces the word through Old French,^[6] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives both French and Latin.^[7] The Latin noun belongs with candid and candle.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Brilliant whiteness: 1398 in the 1989 edition of the OED,^[8] in Barnhart perhaps before 1398, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew's De Proprietatibus Rerum;^[3] Etymonline dates this literal Latin sense to about 1500,^[2] and Dictionary.com to 1350–1400.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word went from a colour to a moral quality, along much the same path as candid.^[10][11][12] Whiteness suggested stainless character, a sense the Shorter Oxford records from the late 15th century and Barnhart and the 1989 edition of the OED from 1610, in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist.^[5][3][8] Next came freedom from bias, before 1637, and a kindly, favourable disposition, in 1653;^[8][5] Johnson (1755) still defined candour as "sweetness of temper; purity of mind; openness; ingenuity; kindness".^[13] Only in the 18th century did it settle on the modern sense of frankness, recorded in 1769 by the OED and in the mid 18th century by the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English,^[8][5][10] although Etymonline dates "openness of mind, frankness" to about 1600.^[2]

Timeline

• 1398 – brilliant whiteness.^[8][3]
• 1610 – purity, integrity, in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist.^[8][3] The Shorter Oxford dates this sense to the late 15th century.^[5]
• before 1637 – freedom from bias; fairness, impartiality.^[8]
• 1653 – kindliness, a favourable disposition.^[8]
• 1769 – frankness, openness in what one says.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. Honesty and openness in what one says; frankness: She answered the committee's questions with unusual candor.^[6][14][7]
2. Freedom from prejudice or bias; impartiality.^[6][14][7]
3. (rare) Whiteness, brilliance.^[7][5][15]
4. (obsolete) Stainless purity, innocence.^[7][5][8]
5. (archaic) Kindliness, good nature.^[7][5][8]

Related words

• candid
• candle
• candidate
• incandescent
• incense

Usage notes

Candor is the American spelling and candour the British one.^[14][2][5]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ 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
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers