filament

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin fīlāmentum,^[2][3][4][5] possibly under the influence of Middle French filament;^[4] Merriam-Webster derives it from Middle French,^[6] and Hoad and the Oxford Dictionary of English give French or Modern Latin as the source.^[7][8] The Latin noun is from Late Latin fīlō (“to spin, draw out in a long line”),^[2][3][4] with the suffix -mentum,^[9] from Latin fīlum (“thread”),^[2][3][10] from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰi- (“thread, tendon”).^[3][5] It is related to file, a collection of papers, which originally meant a thread.^[11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A fine thread-like body or fibre: 1594, in T. Bowes's translation of La Primaudaye's French Academy.^[2][4] Etymonline gives "fine untwisted thread, separate fibril", 1590s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th century the word was extended to a thread of air, light or the like (1646, Sir Thomas Browne),^[2] and in 1756 botanists applied it to the stalk of a stamen.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as a slender thread, or a body long and slender like one.^[13] In astronomy it named a thin streamer of gas in a nebula (1846) or from the sun's chromosphere (1869).^[2] Its best-known modern sense, the thin conductor that glows in an incandescent lamp, dates from 1881, when it was still made of carbon; it is now usually tungsten.^[2][3][14] A thread of man-made fibre was called a filament from 1927.^[2]

Timeline

• 1594 – a fine thread-like body or fibre.^[2][4]
• 1646 – a thread of air, light and the like.^[2]
• 1756 – in botany, the stalk of a stamen that bears the anther.^[2]
• 1846 – in astronomy, a slender body of gas in a nebula or in space.^[2]
• 1870 – the shaft of a down feather.^[2]
• 1881 – the conductor of an incandescent electric lamp.^[2][3]
• 1927 – a thread of man-made fibre.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A very fine thread or thread-like fibre: filaments of spider silk.^[6][14][2]
2. The thin wire, usually of tungsten, in a light bulb that glows when an electric current heats it.^[14][2]
3. (electronics) A high-resistance wire forming the cathode in some valves.^[14]
4. A single strand of natural or synthetic fibre, especially one used in textile yarns.^[14][6][2]
5. (botany) The stalk of a stamen, which bears the anther.^[14][2]
6. (botany) One of the long slender chains of cells into which some algae and fungi are divided.^[14]
7. (astronomy) A thin streamer of gas from the sun's chromosphere, or a long thread of material in space.^[2]

Word family

• filamentous
• filamentary
• filamented
• monofilament
• microfilament
• multifilament
• myofilament
• neurofilament

Related words

• file
• fillet
• filigree
• profile
• filature

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins