cohesive

Etymology

It is formed from English cohesion + -ive,^[2][3][4] or, as the OED and Etymonline put it, from cohaes-, the past participle stem of Latin cohaereō (“to stick together”), with the suffix -ive.^[5][6][7] The Latin verb is formed from com- (“together”) and haereō (“to stick, adhere”),^[6] and is the source of cohere; cohesion (1670s) came through cohésion.^[6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Having the property of sticking together; marked by cohesion: 1727–31, in Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary.^[5] Etymonline dates it to 1730,^[6] Merriam-Webster to about 1731,^[2] and Dictionary.com to 1720–30.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a term of physics for the force that holds the particles of a body together,^[5][6] and Johnson (1755) defined it as having the power of sticking to something else and resisting separation.^[8] The Latin verb had already taken the transferred sense "to be coherent or consistent",^[6] and in modern English the adjective is used above all of groups, families and pieces of work whose parts form a unified whole.^[2][9] The noun cohesiveness is recorded from the mid-18th century and the adverb cohesively from the early 19th.^[4]

Timeline

• 1727 – having the property of cohering; characterized by cohesion.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Holding together well as a unified whole: a cohesive team.^[2][9]
2. Sticking together; tending to cohere.^[9][5]
3. Causing or producing cohesion: cohesive forces between molecules.^[2][9][10]

Word family

• cohesively
• cohesiveness
• noncohesive
• uncohesive

Related words

• adhesive
• cohere
• coherence
• coherent
• cohesion

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press