coeval

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin coaevus (“of the same age”) with the English suffix -al,^[2][3][4][5] from Latin co- (“jointly, in common”) and aevum (“age, lifetime”),^[6][7] from Proto-Indo-European *aiw- (“vital force, life; long life, eternity”).^[8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person or thing of the same period, a contemporary: 1605, in Bacon's Advancement of Learning,^[2][3] as the noun, which is recorded before the adjective.^[3] Etymonline has the noun from about 1600,^[8] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1595–1605.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Although recorded first, the noun seems to be a use of the adjective, which appears a little later.^[3] The adjective meant at first "of equal antiquity, going back to the same date" (1652, in Heylyn),^[2] and over the following century it spread to equal age (1700, in Dryden), existence in the same period (1714) and equal duration (1744, in Young).^[2] A shorter adjective coeve, directly from the Latin, had a brief life from 1659 to 1678.^[2] Johnson (1755) defines the adjective as "of the same age" and notes that it is followed by with or sometimes to, quoting Hale's "coeval with mankind".^[10] The spelling coaeval also exists.^[11]

Timeline

• 1605 – noun, a person or thing of the same period, in Bacon.^[2][3]
• 1652 – adjective, of equal antiquity or contemporaneous origin, in Heylyn.^[2] Barnhart dates it to an edition of the same work between 1622 and 1662,^[3] Etymonline to the 1620s,^[8] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to 1645.^[12]
• 1656 – noun, a person of the same age as another, in Blount.^[2]
• 1700 – adjective, of the same age, in Dryden.^[2]
• 1714 – existing in the same age, contemporary.^[2]
• 1744 – lasting the same length of time, in Young.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of the same age or antiquity; having the same origin in time: The chapel is coeval with the oldest part of the castle.^[12][2][11]
2. Existing in the same period; contemporary.^[12][2][13]
3. Lasting for the same length of time.^[2][14][3]

Noun

1. A person or thing of the same period; a contemporary.^[11][2][13]
2. A person of the same age as another: She outlived all her coevals.^[12][2][14]

Word family

• coevally
• coevality

Related words

• age
• aeon
• longevity
• primeval
• medieval
• eternal
• aye

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 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. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
14. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press