Etymologically
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contagious

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Pronunciation

  • /kənˈteɪ.d͡ʒəs/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English contagious,[2] borrowed from Old French contagieus (modern contagieux),[3][4][5][6] and directly borrowed from Late Latin contāgiōsus,[4][7][8][9] from contāgiō (“a touching, contact”),[4][5][7] with the suffix -ōsus, English -ous.[7][3] The Latin noun comes from contingō (“to touch”), formed from com- (“with, together”) and tangō (“to touch”), from Proto-Indo-European *tag- (“to touch, handle”).[4] The Latin word was often used in a bad sense, of contact with something physically or morally unclean.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Characterized by contagion, passing on disease or corruption by contact: about 1374, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius,[3] where Benson's concordance glosses it "corrupting, evil".[10] The Middle English Dictionary also records it, before 1398 in Trevisa, of contaminated air and of a dragon's "contagious blastes" that corrupt the air.[2]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline gives three late 14th-century senses: contaminating or contaminated (of air or water), communicable (of disease), and morally corrupting.[4] It was used of diseases themselves from about 1400,[3][2] and of persons or things carrying the germs of a disease from 1584.[3] A wider set of senses, breeding disease, harmful or noxious in general, and morally or socially pernicious, was current from the 15th century but had died out by the late 18th.[3][8] The figurative sense, readily passed from one person to another, as of laughter or a mood, is recorded from 1660, in R. Boyle.[3][4] Johnson (1755) defined it as "infectious; caught by approach; poisonous; pestilential".[11] In Irish English of the 19th century the word was used for "near, contiguous",[12] a gloss that Skeat also gives for one passage of Chaucer.[13]

Timeline

  • c. 1374 – of the nature of contagion; passing on disease or corruption by contact.[3]
  • before 1398 – of air, contaminated, harmful.[2]
  • c. 1400 – of a disease, communicable by contact.[3][2]
  • 1495 – breeding disease, pestilential (obsolete by 1792).[3]
  • 1584 – carrying the germs of an infectious disease.[3]
  • 1660 – figurative, apt to spread from one person to another.[3][4]
  • 1866 – the Contagious Diseases Acts, against venereal disease.[3]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Of a disease, passed on by direct or indirect contact with an infected person or with something they have handled; compare infectious.[14][6][15]
  2. Of a person or animal, carrying and able to spread such a disease: The doctor said the child was no longer contagious.[14][6]
  3. Of a feeling, attitude or mood, likely to spread to others: His laughter was contagious.[15][14][3]
  4. (obsolete) Breeding disease; pestilential, harmful or noxious.[3][8]

Word family

  • contagiously
  • contagiousness
  • anticontagious
  • uncontagious
  • contagion
  • contagious magic
  • contagious abortion

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  6. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  8. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  13. ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  15. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press