gravitation

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin gravitātiō,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} a noun of action from gravitō (“to gravitate”),^[2][3][6] which comes from Latin gravitās (“weight, heaviness”) and gravis (“heavy”),^[2][7] from Proto-Indo-European *gwere- (“heavy”).^[7] The OED compares French gravitation.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Attraction toward something, a natural tendency: the first record is figurative, from 1644, in K. Digby's Two Treatises.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates this sense to about 1645,^[4] and Etymonline dates both the physical and the figurative word to the 1640s.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The figurative and the physical sense appear within a few years of each other: Browne used the word in 1646 for the attraction of one body to another,^[2] and H. Power in 1664 for the falling of bodies to the earth or their sinking to their lowest level.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as the "act of tending to the centre", quoting Bentley's sermons and Pope.^[8] The OED says that the early use of falling or sinking was later applied more widely to the working of the attraction.^[2] From 1814 the word could also name its amount or degree.^[2] The law of gravitation states how the force depends on the masses of two bodies and the distance between them.^[3] The word is now close to gravity in the physical sense,^[9] while the figurative sense of a drift toward a point of influence, sometimes in a bad sense, continues beside it.^[2][4][3]

Timeline

• 1644 – attraction toward an object or a point of influence, a natural tendency.^[2][4]
• 1646 – the attraction of one body for another.^[2]
• 1664 – the falling of bodies to the earth, the action of gravitating.^[2]
• 1814 – the amount or degree of such attraction.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The force of attraction that bodies exert on one another because of their mass; gravity.^[9][4][2]
2. The process caused by this force, such as the falling of a body to the earth.^[9][2]
3. A movement or natural tendency toward something: the gravitation of young workers toward the cities.^[4][2][3]

Word family

• gravitational
• gravitationally
• gravitative
• antigravitation
• nongravitation
• supergravitation

Related words

• gravity
• gravitate
• grave

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
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. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins