conspicuous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cōnspicuus (“visible, open to view; striking”) with the suffix -ous,^[2][3][4][5] from cōnspiciō (“to catch sight of, observe, notice”),^[3][4][6][7] formed com-, here probably an intensive prefix, and speciō (“to look at”),^[4][6][5][8] from Proto-Indo-European *spek- (“to observe”).^[4][6] Dictionary.com analyses the Latin adjective as the verb with a suffix that forms adjectives from verbs, as in contiguous and continuous.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Clearly visible, easy to be seen, striking to the eye: 1545, in Thomas Raynald's translation of Roesslin, The Byrth of Mankynde.^[2][3] Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to about 1534,^[7] and Dictionary.com to 1535–45.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From the visible the word passed to the mental: "obvious to the mind, plainly evident" is recorded from 1604, in Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall,^[2] and in Etymonline from the 1610s, whence "eminent, remarkable, distinguished".^[4][2] Johnson (1755) gave both, "obvious to the sight" and "eminent; famous; distinguished".^[10] The phrase conspicuous by its absence was coined in 1859 by Lord John Russell, after a passage in Tacitus's Annals (iii.76) about the images of Cassius and Brutus, which stood out because they were not shown.^[11][4][2] Conspicuous consumption, lavish spending to display wealth and raise one's prestige, comes from the economist Thorstein Veblen: the OED cites his Theory of the Leisure Class (1899),^[2] and Etymonline finds the phrase in his writing by 1895.^[4]

Timeline

• 1545 – clearly visible, striking to the eye.^[2][3] Merriam-Webster dates it to about 1534.^[7]
• 1604 – obvious to the mind; attracting attention, remarkable.^[2]
• 1859 – conspicuous by its absence.^[2][11][4]
• 1899 – of spending, lavish in order to display wealth, as in conspicuous consumption.^[2][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Easily seen; clearly visible: The lighthouse is conspicuous from miles out at sea.^[12][7][2]
2. Attracting attention because of some striking quality; remarkable or eminent: conspicuous courage.^[12][7][2]
3. Obvious or showy.^[12]
4. conspicuous by one's (or its) absence: very noticeable because absent.^[7][2][11]
5. Of spending, done on a lavish scale to display wealth, as in conspicuous consumption.^[2][4]

Word family

• conspicuously
• conspicuousness
• inconspicuous
• conspicuous consumption

Related words

• conspicuity
• conspectus
• spy
• species
• spectacle
• perspicuous

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b 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 Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins