cartilage

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English cartilage,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French cartilage^[3][4][2] and directly borrowed from Latin cartilāgō (“cartilage, gristle”).^[5][4][2] Barnhart takes the French form as Middle French,^[5] and the OED, which first records the word in 1541, as 16th-century French.^[6] The Latin word is possibly related to crātis (“wickerwork”),^[5][4][7][8] the source of crate;^[5][8] Etymonline and Webster's Third connect it further with hurdle.^[4][9] Chambers also compares a Greek word for a basket.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Gristle, the firm elastic tissue of the body: before 1425, in a translation of Guy de Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie, which explains that cartilage is of the nature of bone but softer.^[2][5] Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus (before 1398) had already given cartilago as the Latin name of gristle.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its anatomical meaning since its first use; from the start it also named a structure made of the tissue, such as the gristly parts of the nose or ear.^[2][6] The OED, whose entry is not fully revised, starts both senses in 1541, in Robert Copland's Questyonary of Cyrurgyens, also from Chauliac.^[6] A transferred use for the coats of an onion is recorded only in 1563.^[6] The English word long stood beside the native gristle, which the Chauliac translation itself gives as a gloss.^[2]

Timeline

• before 1425 – gristle; also a gristly part of the body.^[2][5] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1350–1400,^[11] and the OED's first records of both senses are from 1541.^[6]
• 1541 – the adjective cartilaginous.^[5]
• 1563 – the coats of an onion (obsolete).^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tough, elastic connective tissue that forms most of the skeleton of vertebrate embryos and in adults remains in the joints, ear, nose and larynx; gristle.^[3][7][12]
2. A structure made of this tissue: the cartilages of the ribs.^[6][7][3]

Word family

• fibrocartilage
• cartilaginous
• hyaline cartilage
• thyroid cartilage

Related words

• crate
• hurdle

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
10. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins