estrus

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin oestrus (“gadfly; frenzy”),^[2][3][4] used in New Latin as a scientific term,^[5][6] from Ancient Greek οἶστρος (oîstros, “gadfly; sting; frenzy, mad impulse”).^[2][3][7] Beekes takes the Greek noun as originally an instrument or agent noun, an "urger" or "irritator", from a verb meaning to set in vehement motion, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃eis- (“to set in movement, irritate”), and compares the identically formed Lithuanian aistra (“vehement passion”).^[8] Etymonline and Barnhart trace it to *eis-, a root forming words for passion,^[3][2] and Klein and Ayto connect it, probably, with Latin īra (“anger”), the source of ire.^[7][9] The adjective estrous is formed from it, first recorded in 1900, in its British spelling.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A gadfly: 1697, in Dryden's writings, under the spelling oestrus.^[2][10][3]

Semantic evolution

The Greek word already ranged from the gadfly to its sting and to madness or frenzy,^[9][8] and Ayto suggests that "frenzy" was the original meaning, the insect being named for the frenzy it caused in cattle.^[9] English took the senses in the opposite order: the gadfly in 1697, a goading passion or frenzy from 1850, in Edward FitzGerald's letters, and the physiological sense of rut or sexual heat in animals in 1890,^[2][10][3] the only one now in common use; the insect sense survives mainly in the genus name Oestrus.^[4][6] Dictionary.com dates the physiological word to 1885–90.^[11]

Timeline

• 1697 – a gadfly or botfly.^[2][10][3]
• 1850 – a stimulus or goad; passion, frenzy.^[2][10][3]
• 1890 – the rut or heat of female animals.^{[2][10][3][6]}

Meanings

Noun

1. The regularly recurring period during which most female mammals are sexually receptive and able to conceive; heat: The mare came into estrus in early spring.^[6][5][12]
2. A single occurrence of this period.^[6]
3. (rare) A frenzy or goading passion.^[4][10]
4. (archaic) A gadfly or botfly.^[6][4][10]

Word family

• anestrus
• estrogen
• metestrus
• proestrus

Related words

• ire
• estrous

Usage notes

Estrus is the usual American spelling;^[12][1] British English writes oestrus,^[12][4] and the older œstrus is obsolete.^[1] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also records the less common forms estrum and oestrum.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b c d e f g Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins