detestable

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English detestable,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French détestable,^[4][2][5][6] recorded in French from 1380,^[7] and directly borrowed from Latin dētestābilis (“execrable, abominable”).^[4][2][5][6] The OED and Klein name only the French word as its source, and Merriam-Webster gives it as Middle French.^[7][8][3] The Latin adjective is from dētestor (“to curse, execrate”), literally "to denounce with one's testimony", which is formed from dē- (“from, down”) and testor (“to be a witness”), from testis (“witness”), the base also of testament.^[4] The English verb detest is recorded only from the 1530s, more than a century later.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Abominable, odious: 1415, in Hoccleve, in the phrase "your detestable errour".^[2] The OED, in an entry not fully revised, has its first quotation from Caxton's History of Jason (1477),^[7] and Etymonline dates the word to the early 15th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb behind it literally meant to denounce with one's testimony,^[4] but the English adjective means hateful or odious from its first records.^[2][7] Lydgate writes of "lippis detestable" before 1450.^[2] Johnson (1755) defines it as hateful, abhorred and odious, quoting "Most detestable death" from Romeo and Juliet.^[9] Its stress has moved: the OED says it was originally on the second syllable, but on the first in Spenser and Shakespeare,^[7] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged records the first-syllable stress as archaic.^[3] Modern definitions range from abhorrence to intense dislike.^[10][6]

Timeline

• 1415 – abominable, odious, in Hoccleve.^[2] The OED's first quotation is from 1477, in Caxton.^[7]
• 1610 – as a quasi-adverb, detestably, in Histrio-mastix.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Deserving intense hatred or disgust; abominable, odious: a detestable crime against the helpless.^{[11][3][7][10]}

Word family

• detestability
• detestably
• detestableness
• undetestable

Related words

• detest

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins