causality

Etymology

The revised OED takes it as borrowed from Medieval Latin causālitās (“causal action, relation of cause and effect”),^[2] recorded from the 13th century in British and continental sources,^[2] from causālis (“causal”) and -tās,^[2] from causa (“cause”).^[2][3] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English give either French causalité or the Medieval Latin word as the source,^[4][3] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged derives it from the French word, itself from Middle French, from causal and -ité.^[5] Etymonline and Dictionary.com treat it as an English formation from causal and -ity.^[6][7] The OED notes that the Latin word appears in a late 4th-century work attributed to Augustine only in later manuscripts, and compares Middle French causalité (from 1378), Italian causalità (before 1396), Spanish causalidad (1549 or earlier) and Portuguese causalidade (1696).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The causal quality or agency of a person or thing; the fact of being or acting as a cause: 1535, in W. Marshall's translation of Marsilius of Padua.^[2] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the late 15th century,^[4][3] while Etymonline gives about 1600 and Merriam-Webster 1603, the date in the 1989 edition of the OED.^[6][5][8]

Semantic evolution

The word first named the power or quality of causing,^[2][4] the sense Johnson (1755) gave as "the agency of a cause; the quality of causing", with a quotation from Browne's Vulgar Errours.^[9] From 1642 it also meant the operation or relation of cause and effect, and the principle that certain effects are necessarily brought about by certain causes,^[2][6] which is now its main sense.^[10][11][5] T. Blount's Glossographia (1656) apparently used it for an excuse, a sense that did not last.^[2] In phrenology it was, from 1815, the mental faculty of linking effects to their causes, a sense now historical.^[2][4] In law it is a synonym of causation.^[12]

Timeline

• 1535 – the quality or agency of a cause.^[2] Etymonline gives about 1600 for this sense.^[6]
• 1642 – the relation of cause and effect; the principle that effects have causes.^[2][6]
• 1656 – apparently, an excuse (obsolete, rare).^[2]
• 1815 – in phrenology, the faculty of tracing effects to their causes.^[2] The 1989 edition of the OED dated this sense to 1874.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The relationship between a cause and its effect: Investigators struggled to establish causality between the leak and the illnesses.^{[10][11][5][12]}
2. The principle that nothing happens without a cause.^[10][5][2]
3. A causal agency, force or quality.^[10][11][5]
4. (phrenology, historical) The mental faculty of tracing effects to their causes.^[2][4]

Word family

• noncausality

Related words

• causal
• causative
• noncausative
• cause
• causation
• casualty

Usage notes

Dictionary.com lists causality among the words easily confused with casualty, causation and cause.^[7] The legal dictionaries treat causality and causation as synonyms.^[12]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
12. ^ a b c Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West