Etymologically
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dangerous

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈdeɪn.dʒᵊr.əs/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English daungerous (“haughty, hard to please”),[2][3] borrowed from Anglo-Norman dangerous, Old French dangeros,[2][4] from dangier (“power, mastery, power to harm”) and the suffix -eus.[2][3][5] See danger.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Difficult to deal with, haughty, arrogant: before 1225 in the OED,[6] about 1200 in Etymonline.[2]

Semantic evolution

The first senses came from danger in its old meaning of “power, mastery”: someone daungerous was overbearing, hard to please or reluctant to give, as often in Chaucer.[2][6][5] The modern sense, “full of risk, likely to cause harm”, is from about 1400 in Etymonline[2] and 1490 in the OED.[6] “Hurtful” is from 1548 and is obsolete.[6] “In danger, dangerously ill” is from before 1616 and survives in dialect and American colloquial use.[6][7] Other words once used in the modern sense were dangerful (1540s) and dangersome (1560s).[2] In southern Pembrokeshire dialect dangerous meant “excessive”.[7]

Timeline

  • before 1225 – haughty, difficult.[6]
  • c. 1386 – hard to please; reluctant to give.[6]
  • c. 1400 – risky, likely to cause harm.[2]
  • 1548 – hurtful.[6]
  • before 1616 – dangerously ill.[6]

Modern meaning

Adjective

  1. Likely to cause harm or injury; hazardous.
  2. Likely to cause problems or have bad consequences: a dangerous precedent.
  3. (dialect) Seriously ill.

Word family

  • dangerously
  • dangerousness
  • nondangerous
  • semidangerous
  • undangerous

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b 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)