generosity

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English generosite,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Latin generōsitās (“good breeding, nobility, excellence, magnanimity”),^[5][6][3] which the American Heritage Dictionary takes through Old French.^[2] The OED compares Middle French generosité, recorded from before 1506,^[5] and Klein and Johnson gave French as the source.^[7][8] The Latin noun meant excellence of stock in people, animals or plants, and in post-classical Latin also nobility of character (4th century).^[5] It is formed from generōsus (“of noble birth; magnanimous”) and the suffix -tās,^[5][6] and generōsus is from genus (“race, stock”),^[6] from Proto-Indo-European *gene- (“to give birth, beget”).^[6][2] There are cognates in Catalan generositat, Spanish generosidad and Italian generosità.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Aristocratic birth or lineage, nobility: before 1475, in a translation of Higden's Polychronicon.^[5] Etymonline dates the sense "nobility, goodness of race" to the early 15th century.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Trench used the word to show what he called the aristocratic tendencies of language: the meaning moved from noble birth to the conduct expected of the nobly born, until generosity lost its first sense and kept a purely moral one.^[9] He quoted Lyly's Euphues and his England: "Nobility began in thine ancestors and ended in thee: and the generosity that they gained by virtue, thou hast blotted by vice."^[9] The sense of noble spirit is recorded from 1539, and is now weakened to a readiness to lay aside resentment.^[5][10] The sense now most common, a readiness to give more than is expected, appears in 1634;^[5] Etymonline dates it to the 1670s and the Shorter Oxford to the late 17th century.^[6][10] A generous act was a generosity from 1606, and the sense "abundance" followed in 1904.^[5] The older sense of noble birth died out in the 19th century,^[5] and Merriam-Webster labels it archaic.^[3] Of a horse, the word meant excellence of breed from 1578, and later willingness or responsiveness.^[5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "magnanimity; liberality".^[8]

Timeline

• before 1475 – aristocratic birth, nobility (archaic by the 19th century).^[5]
• 1539 – nobility of spirit; magnanimity.^[5]
• 1578 – of a horse, excellence of breed.^[5]
• 1606 – a generous act.^[5]
• 1634 – liberality in giving, munificence.^[5]
• 1904 – abundance, largeness.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The quality of giving money, time or help freely and more than is expected; liberality: The museum owes its new wing to the generosity of a local family.^[11][3][5]
2. Nobility of spirit; magnanimity, especially a readiness to forgive and a freedom from pettiness.^[11][3][10]
3. A generous act.^[11][3][5]
4. Abundance or ample size.^[11][3][5]
5. (archaic) Noble birth or lineage (obsolete, ?1475–1862).^[3][5][10]

Word family

• overgenerosity
• supergenerosity
• ungenerosity

Related words

• generous
• genus
• generic
• gentle

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
9. ^ a b Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
10. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins