guile

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English gile, also guile,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French guile (“deceit, wile, fraud, trickery”),^{[5][6][7][2][8]} and Anglo-Norman gile, recorded from 1212.^[9][1] The further origin is uncertain.^[5] The OED takes it as presumably Germanic but finds no certain source: Old English wīl, recorded only once, late, may itself be borrowed from French, and Old Norse vél seems to be ruled out on phonetic grounds; it compares Old Occitan guila and Portuguese guilha.^[5] Barnhart and Etymonline propose Frankish *wigila (“trick, ruse”),^[7][6] comparing Old Frisian wigila (“sorcery, witchcraft”).^[7][6] The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Unabridged compare Old English wigle (“divination”).^[8][3] Etymonline, following Watkins, goes on to Proto-Germanic *wih-l-, also the source of Old English wig (“idol”), Gothic 𐍅𐌴𐌹𐌷𐍃 (weihs, “holy”) and German weihen (“to consecrate”), from Proto-Indo-European *weik- (“consecrated, holy”).^[6] Wiktionary instead gives Frankish *wīl (“ruse”), from Proto-Germanic *wīlą, from Proto-Indo-European *wey- (“to turn, bend”),^[1] and Köbler sets up a Germanic noun for deceit, with vél and wīl as its reflexes.^[10] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English derive the French word from Old Norse.^[11][12] Barnhart calls guile a doublet of wile.^[7] The verb is inherited from Middle English gilen, also guilen, borrowed from Old French guiler, from the noun.^[3][5][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A deceit or trick, with a plural, and the verb "to deceive": about 1225, in the Cleopatra manuscript of the Ancrene Riwle.^[5] The uncountable sense follows about 1230, in the Corpus manuscript of the same text.^[5][2] Barnhart and Etymonline bring the noun back to about the mid-12th century,^[7][6] and Dictionary.com dates it to 1175–1225.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has hardly moved: the main sense, insidious cunning, is recorded almost from the start.^[5][2] In Middle English the word also covered a particular lie or plot, friendly trickery and something merely illusory,^[2] and Chaucer uses it 8 times and Gower 32.^[14] The countable sense "a trick, a stratagem" lasted until 1767,^[5][11] and Johnson (1755) defined the noun as "deceitful cunning; insidious artifice; mischievous subtilty", quoting Spenser.^[15] The verb is now archaic,^[3][11] and Wright marks it obsolete in Edinburgh, from a quotation of 1821.^[16] Among the derivatives, Barnhart dates guileful to probably before 1300, as gilful, and gilles to 1435, re-formed as guileless in 1728.^[7] In Kent, guile-shares were unlawful shares of wreckage or spoils.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1225 – noun with a plural, a deceit, stratagem or trick (obsolete by 1767).^[5][11]
• c. 1225 – verb, to beguile, deceive.^[5]
• c. 1230 – insidious cunning, deceit, treachery.^[5][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Crafty or deceitful cunning; duplicity: The fox won the crow's cheese by guile rather than by force.^[17][3][5]
2. (obsolete, c. 1225–1767) A trick or stratagem; a wile.^[5][11][3]

Verb

1. (archaic) To beguile or deceive.^[3][11][5]

Word family

• guileful
• guilefully
• guilefulness
• guileless
• beguile

Related words

• wile
• wily

Usage notes

Wright also records guile, gile or gyle from East Yorkshire as a channel on the beach that the high tide fills, leaving a small island within, and as an island of sand or a quicksand; he enters it apart from the word for deceit.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b c 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)
17. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins