Etymologically
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conspicuous

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Pronunciation

  • /kənˈspɪk.ju.əs/[1]

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

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