femur

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin femur (“thigh”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} In classical Latin the word meant the thigh, the corresponding part of other animals, and also the flat vertical band on a triglyph.^[2] The Latin word is of unknown origin,^[2][3] or of uncertain origin.^[4][6] The OED compares Middle French fémur (“thigh bone”), recorded from 1541, and Italian femore, from the 14th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

As a term of architecture, one of the flat faces between the grooves of a Doric triglyph: 1563, in Shute's First Groundes of Architecture.^[2][4][7] Etymonline also dates the word to the 1560s, as an architectural term.^[3] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the late 15th century,^[8][9] the Shorter Oxford in the sense of the thighbone, and formerly the thigh.^[8]

Semantic evolution

English first took the word in the Latin architects' sense.^[2][3][4] The anatomical sense, the bone of the thigh, is recorded in the OED from 1666;^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline date it to 1799.^[4][3] From 1772 entomologists applied the word to the largest upper segment of the leg in insects and other arthropods.^[2] The plural femora follows the Latin plural.^[2]

Timeline

• 1563 – in architecture, a flat face between the grooves of a triglyph.^[2][4][7]
• 1666 – the thighbone.^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline date this sense to 1799.^[4][3]
• 1772 – the upper segment of the leg in insects and other arthropods.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The thighbone, the longest and strongest bone of the human body, running from the hip to the knee.^[10][5][7]
2. The corresponding bone in the hind limb of other vertebrates.^[10][5]
3. The thick segment of an insect's leg between the trochanter and the tibia.^[5][10][2]
4. (architecture) One of the flat spaces between the grooves of a triglyph.^[7][2]

Word family

• femoral

Usage notes

The plural is femurs or, after Latin, femora.^[10][7][2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins