centipede

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin centipeda, also centipēs, a word used by Pliny for the creature,^[2][3][4] formed from centum (“hundred”) and pēs (“foot”),^{[2][5][4][6][7]} the latter from Proto-Indo-European *ped- (“foot”).^[5] Etymonline, Klein, Weekley and Partridge take the English word through French centipède,^[5][6][8][9] and the Oxford Dictionary of English and the Shorter Oxford allow either source;^[10][7] the revised OED derives it from Latin and notes that the French word, recorded from 1653 or earlier, was rare before the late 18th century.^[2] Some early English forms followed Spanish cientopiés, recorded from the early 16th century,^[2] and Hobson-Jobson suggested that the word was perhaps taken directly from Portuguese centopèa in India.^[11] The Latin compound is related to centi- and pedal.^[6][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A many-legged arthropod with venomous front claws: 1601, in Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, which Barnhart reads as still the Latin form centipeda.^[2][4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates the word to 1601.^[3] The Latin noun had already appeared in English contexts: glossed in the Medulla Grammatice before 1425, and as centum pedes in a medical translation of 1580.^[2] Etymonline records centipeda by the 1530s and centipes in the 1560s, with the English form from the 1630s,^[5] and Barnhart dates the form centipede to 1646.^[12][4]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) described it as a poisonous insect of the West Indies, called "forty legs" by the English there.^[13] From the 19th century the word was also applied to things thought to resemble the animal, especially in having many legs (1847).^[2] In sailors' language a centipede or centipede gasket was a rope with short cross-pieces worked into it at intervals (1857), and in 1877 a wooden block with holes for the ropes of an awning.^[2] In Caribbean English it is also a derogatory word for a brawling, foul-mouthed woman, perhaps from the creature's vicious sting.^[14]

Timeline

• before 1425 – Latin centipeda glossed in the Medulla Grammatice.^[2]
• 1601 – the many-legged arthropod.^[2][3] Etymonline dates the English form to the 1630s.^[5]
• 1847 – figurative, something with many legs.^[2]
• 1857 – nautical, a rope with short cross-pieces worked into it.^[2]
• 1877 – nautical, a wooden block for the ropes of an awning (obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of many predatory arthropods of the class Chilopoda, with a long flattened body of many segments, most bearing one pair of legs, the front pair forming venomous claws: A centipede scuttled out from under the flowerpot.^{[15][3][2][7]}
2. Something likened to a centipede, especially for having many legs.^[2]
3. (nautical) A rope with short lengths of rope worked into it at intervals as cross-pieces.^[2]

Word family

• centipede grass

Related words

• centi-
• pedal
• millipede

Usage notes

In American regional speech the Dictionary of American Regional English records forms such as santiped and santerfee, and the folk-etymological sandy Pete; it takes the forms without a final d or t from Spanish cientopie or Portuguese.^[16]

References

1. ^ 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 d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Yule, Henry; Burnell, A. C. (1903), Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, new ed. by William Crooke, London: John Murray
12. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
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. ^ Allsopp, Richard, ed. (1996), Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
16. ^ Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press