Etymologically
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generosity

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˌd͡ʒɛn.əˈɹɒs.ɪ.ti/[1]
  • US: /ˌd͡ʒɛn.əˈɹɑ.sə.ti/[1]

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

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