cavil

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French caviller (“to mock, jest”),^[2][3][4][5] which the OED dates to the 14th century,^[6] a learned borrowing from Latin cavillor (“to jeer, jest, reason captiously”),^[2][6][1] from cavilla (“a jeering, raillery”).^[6][4][3][7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Dictionary.com derive the English verb directly from Latin.^[8][9] The Latin verb is also the source of Italian cavillare, Spanish cavilar and Portuguese cavillar.^[6] Barnhart and Klein take the Latin noun as an altered form of *calvilla, related to calumnia (“false accusation”), the source of calumny,^[2][7][3] and Klein and Merriam-Webster Unabridged compare calvī (“to deceive, use artifice”).^[7][8] Weekley, noting the dialect sense "to squabble", suggested instead a link with Norwegian kjavla (“to quarrel”), which he related to Old English ceafl (“jaw”).^[10] The noun is formed from the verb.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To raise petty or unfair objections: 1548, in the translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the New Testament by Nicholas Udall and others.^[6][2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1542,^[8] and Etymonline the 1540s.^[3] Middle English already had cavillacioun, quibbling, used by Chaucer in the Summoner's Tale about 1395,^[11][12] and dated by Barnhart probably to 1388.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb ranged from jesting to captious reasoning, and English has the captious sense from its first records: Cotgrave's gloss of the French is "to cauill, wrangle, reason crossely".^[6] The Latin sense of jeering did appear in English, rarely, from 1570 to 1616, and in a noun for a gibe in Chapman's Homer.^[6] The noun for a petty objection dates from 1570, and for the habit of raising such objections from 1597, in Hooker.^[6] A transitive use, to object to something, followed in 1581,^[6] and Milton has both cavil the conditions in Paradise Lost,^[13] and, in 1642, the verb with away.^[6] Johnson's definition of 1755, "to raise captious and frivolous objections", is quoted by the OED.^[13][6] In English dialect it could go further: in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and Cornwall it meant a quarrel or to quarrel.^[14]

Timeline

• 1548 – to raise frivolous objections.^[6][2]
• 1570 – noun, a petty or frivolous objection.^[6][2]
• 1570 – to jeer, as in Latin (obsolete by 1616).^[6]
• 1581 – transitive, to find fault with.^[6]
• 1597 – the raising of frivolous objections.^[6]
• c. 1615 – a gibe or jeer (obsolete).^[6]
• 1642 – with away or out, to do away with or bring out by cavilling.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To raise petty or unfair objections; to quibble, usually with at or about: The reviewers caviled at the length of the final act.^[15][8][6]
2. To find fault with something for trivial reasons.^[8][6][5]

Noun

1. A petty or frivolous objection: She signed the contract without a single cavil.^[15][8][6]
2. The habit of raising such objections.^[8][6]

Word family

• caviler

Related words

• cavillation
• calumny
• challenge

Usage notes

The English Dialect Dictionary also lists unrelated dialect words of this spelling: cavil, the chaff of threshed wheat, in Surrey and the Isle of Wight, and in Shetland cavil, to take a hook out of a fish's mouth, which it compares with Old Norse kefli (“stick, piece of wood”).^[14]

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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b 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 f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ 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)
12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
13. ^ a b 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 Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins