gout

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English goute, also gute,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French goute, also gote (modern goutte), meaning both a drop and gout,^[4][5][3][6] from Latin gutta (“drop”), which in Medieval Latin was applied to gout and other diseases thought to come from a flow of humours.^[4][5][7] The MED and the Shorter Oxford also allow a direct borrowing of gutta.^[2][8] The disease was named from the old medical belief that drops of diseased humours seeped from the blood into the joints,^[5][7][6][9] which Etymonline and Ayto note is not far from the modern explanation, deposits of uric acid in the joints.^[5][10] The Latin noun is of unknown origin;^[5][3] Merriam-Webster compares Armenian words for "drop" and "milk",^[11] and Partridge thinks it probably imitative.^[12] The Anglo-Norman noun, recorded from the early 12th century, meant a drop, a spot and the disease.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

An attack of gout, or the disease itself: about 1290, in the South English Legendary.^[4] Barnhart finds the form gute earlier, probably before 1200, in the compound gutefeastre, a festering gouty swelling, in the Ancrene Riwle,^[3] and Etymonline dates the word to about 1200.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English goute was an attack of gout or arthritis, a painful swelling at a joint, and the chronic disease;^[2] Chaucer used it once, in the Canterbury Tales.^[14][15] Falling gout was epilepsy, after Medieval Latin, before 1400,^[4] and the word was also used for a disease of the feet in hawks (1486–1600).^[4] The original sense "drop" was taken over again, recorded before 1398 in the MED,^[2] while the OED's first record is from 1503;^[4] Weekley notes that its modern use goes back to the "gouts of blood" in Shakespeare's Macbeth,^[16][17] and it now usually means a large splash or clot.^[4][8] Johnson (1755) also recorded gout for a drop of medicine, still used by Scottish physicians.^[17][4] From 1828 it named a disease of wheat caused by the larva of the gout-fly.^[4][11] In Scots and Midland dialect it still meant a drop, especially a large drop of rain.^[18]

Timeline

• before 1200 – gute in gutefeastre, a gouty swelling.^[3]
• c. 1290 – an attack of gout.^[4]
• 1297 – the gout, the disease.^[4]
• before 1398 – a drop of liquid.^[2] The OED's first record of this sense is from 1503.^[4]
• before 1400 – falling gout, epilepsy (obsolete).^[4]
• 1486 – a disease of the feet in hawks (obsolete by 1600).^[4]
• 1828 – a disease of wheat.^[4]
• 1833 – a spot of colour like a drop.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A metabolic disease in which crystals of uric acid build up in the joints, causing painful inflammation, especially of the big toe: My uncle's gout flares up after a rich dinner.^[19][11][4]
2. A drop, splash or clot, especially of blood: gouts of blood on the snow.^[19][4][8]
3. A disease of wheat caused by the larva of a fly.^[11][4]

Word family

• goutiness
• gouty
• goutish
• goutweed

Related words

• gutter
• goutte

Usage notes

Two other words share the spelling.^[4][8] Gout, a water channel, sluice or covered drain, is recorded from 1598 and now survives only in dialect; the OED takes it as perhaps a variant of gote and compares Old French esgout, a sewer.^{[4][11][8][18]} Goût, taste or relish, is borrowed from French and goes back to Latin gustus, taste.^[4][11][8]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
13. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
14. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
15. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
16. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
17. ^ 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.
18. ^ 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)
19. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins