girdle

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English girdel, also gurdel,^[2][3] inherited from Old English gyrdel (“belt, zone, purse”),^[4][5][6][7] from Proto-Germanic *gurdilaz,^[8][9] and is formed from gyrdan (“to gird”) with the suffix -le.^[5][10][11] The Germanic verb comes from a stem *gurd- (“surrounding”), which is also behind gird,^[12] while garth and girth go back to a related stem.^[12] It is cognate with Old Frisian gerdel, Middle Dutch gurdel and gordel, Dutch gordel, Old High German gurtil, German Gürtel, Old Norse gyrðill and Swedish gördel,^[5][3][6] and Gothic 𐌱𐌹𐌲𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌳𐌰𐌽 (bigairdan, “to gird oneself”) has the related verb.^[1] Etymonline traces the family to Proto-Indo-European *gher- (“to grasp, enclose”),^[6][7] and Köbler to *gʰerdʰ- (“to grasp, enclose, surround”).^[9] Old English first had a differently suffixed gyrdels, matching Old Saxon gurdisl, which did not survive into Middle English.^[5][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A belt worn round the waist, to fasten the clothes or to carry a weapon or purse: about 1000,^[3] in the West Saxon Gospels, where a leather belt at Matthew 3:4 is a fellenne gyrdel.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

The Old English word was worn by men and women alike, to hold the clothes and to carry a purse, weapon or keys,^[6] and Old English could also use it for a surrounding zone: Bosworth–Toller quotes the five gyrdlas of the Latin quinque zonas.^[4][5] This use of something that encircles was still alive when Johnson (1755) gave "enclosure, circumference" and "the equator, the torrid zone" as senses.^[13] Middle English made it a word of idiom: stif under girdel, valiant, and rechen up the girdel, to die, are among the phrases in the MED,^[2] and Chaucer uses the word ten times.^[14] From about 1275 until 1734, beneath the girdle and similar phrases used it for the waist itself.^[5] Shakespeare's to put a girdle round about the earth (1600) lies behind the phrase for travelling round the world,^[5] and the verb, first recorded in 1582, took the same meaning in 1901.^[5] Technical senses followed: an anatomical one from 1601, now mainly the bony supports of the limbs,^[5][11] and the ring cut through a tree's bark to kill it, from the 1660s and especially in North America.^[5][6] The elastic corset that does not reach above the waist, at first an American use, dates from 1925,^[5][3] and Etymonline calls this sense a euphemism.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – gyrdel, a belt worn round the waist.^[3][5]
• c. 1275 – the waist, in phrases such as beneath the girdle (obsolete by 1734); the form gurdel is in Laȝamon's Brut.^[5][3]
• 1519 – a church vestment, the cord worn round the waist.^[5]
• 1548 – a kind of seaweed.^[5]
• 1582 – verb, to surround with a girdle.^[5][3][15]
• 1600 – put a girdle round about, to go round the earth, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.^[5]
• 1601 – an anatomical structure.^[5]
• 1662 – verb, to cut a ring through the bark of a tree, in Winthrop's account of New England tar and pitch.^[5][6]
• 1925 – an elastic corset, originally in the United States.^[5][3][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A belt, sash or cord worn round the waist.^[16][15][5]
2. A woman's close-fitting elastic corset that covers the body from the waist down.^[16][15][11]
3. Anything that surrounds or encircles: a girdle of olive groves round the village.^[16][5][11]
4. In anatomy, a bony structure that supports the limbs, as the pectoral girdle or pelvic girdle.^[16][5][11]
5. The outer edge of a cut gem, held by the setting.^[16][11]
6. A ring cut round the trunk of a tree by removing the bark.^[16][11]
7. A cord or narrow band worn as a vestment to confine the alb.^[15][5]
8. (obsolete, c. 1275–1734) The waist, the part of the body round which a belt is fastened.^[5][11]

Verb

1. To encircle or surround: A low stone wall girdled the orchard.^[16][15][5]
2. To put a belt on or around.^[16][15]
3. To travel round; to make the circuit of.^[15][5]
4. To cut a ring through the bark of a tree or branch, which usually kills it.^[16][15][5]

Word family

• girdlelike
• girdlingly
• engirdle
• girdler
• ungirdle
• panty girdle
• pectoral girdle
• pelvic girdle

Related words

• gird
• girth
• garth
• griddle

Usage notes

In Scotland and northern England girdle is also the word for a griddle, a round iron plate hung over the fire for baking cakes.^[17][11][15] Merriam-Webster derives this word from the Scots forms girdill and girdil, an alteration of Middle English gridel,^[15] and the OED and Hoad explain it as a metathesis of the r in griddle.^[5][10] The OED records it from before 1400, in the Burgh Laws,^[5] and quotes Burns in 1787 for the phrase like a hen on a het girdle, in great discomfort.^[5][11] Wright's dialect dictionary adds a girdle for a thin bed of stone in Northumberland, Durham and Cumberland mining, and, in Somerset, a noun for "a great deal" and a verb for "to mock, sneer".^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
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. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
15. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
16. ^ a b c d e f g h i Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)