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grandchild

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Etymology and origin of the English word grandchild

Confidence
Established
Formation
Compound
First attested
1569 a will of T. Casson
Ultimate origins
Anglo-Norman grauntOld English cild
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
English child
English grandchild
From the same root
English childbirth ← child

Pronunciation

  • /ˈɡɹændˌtʃaɪld/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English grand- + child.[2][3][4][5] The first part goes back to Anglo-Norman graunt, graund, from the use of Old French grant in French kinship nouns for the second degree of relationship,[2][3] and the second goes back to Old English cild.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The child of one's son or daughter: 1569, in a will of T. Casson.[2][6] Etymonline dates the word to the 1580s,[3] Merriam-Webster to 1587[7] and Dictionary.com to 1580–90.[5]

Semantic evolution

In English the element grand- was first used for relatives a generation older, in grandsire and grandam, and its extension to relatives a generation younger, as in grandson and granddaughter, dates from Elizabethan times.[3] Grandson is recorded from 1573,[2] and grandchild belongs to the same group of words.[2][3] Old English had no single word for it and used phrases such as Old English suna sunu (“son's son”).[3] The inherited Indo-European word for a grandchild, Proto-Indo-European *nepot-, survives in English only as nephew.[3] Johnson (1755) defined grandchild as one in the second degree of descent and quoted Bacon's Apophthegms on Augustus.[8] A figurative use, for a person or thing derived from another by way of an intermediate step, is recorded from 1661, in Cowley.[2][7]

Timeline

  • 1569 – the child of one's son or daughter.[2][6] Etymonline dates the word to the 1580s.[3]
  • 1661 – figurative, a person or thing derived from another through an intermediate step.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A son or daughter of one's child: She has three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.[9][7][2]
  2. Something that stands to another as a grandchild does to a grandparent, derived from it through an intermediate step.[7][2]

Word family

  • great-grandchild

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  6. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  7. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  9. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
Cite this entry

“Grandchild.” Etymologically, 2 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/grandchild. Accessed 2 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·