hymen

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin hymēn,^[2][3][4][5] from Ancient Greek ὑμήν (humḗn, “thin skin, membrane”).^{[6][2][3][5][7]} The OED takes it directly from Greek, comparing French hymen, used by Paré in the 16th century;^[6] Etymonline and Wiktionary bring it into English through the French word.^[8][1] The Greek noun is usually traced to Proto-Indo-European *syu- (“to bind, sew”), the root of sew, in a form *syu-men-.^[8][2][5][9] Klein calls this probable and compares Latin suō (“to sew”) and a Sanskrit word for a band.^[9][3] Beekes reconstructs *siuH-mn- (“thread, sinew”) and notes that the Sanskrit word matches the Greek in form except for the length of one vowel.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The membrane in anatomy: 1543, in Traheron's The Interpretation of Straunge Wordes, in the OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged.^[6][3] Etymonline and Dictionary.com date the English word only to the 1610s,^[8][4] and the Oxford Dictionary of English to the mid 16th century.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In Greek the word meant any thin skin, film or membrane, as in Hippocrates and Aristotle,^[7][9] and Etymonline notes that the virginal membrane was understood as the membrane above all others.^[8] The narrow medical meaning is credited to Vesalius, in 1550 according to Klein and in the 1555 edition of De humani corporis fabrica according to Etymonline.^[9][8] English kept almost only that meaning: Johnson (1755) defined it as "the virginal membrane".^[11] Scientific writers also used it for other thin layers: in botany from 1728 to 1818, and in conchology for the ligament between the valves of a shell.^[6]

Timeline

• 1543 – the membrane at the opening of the vagina.^[6][3]
• late 19th century – the adjective hymenal.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) A thin fold of mucous membrane that partly covers the opening of the vagina.^{[2][3][6][13]}

Word family

• hymenal
• hymenotomy

Related words

• sew
• suture
• Hymen
• hymeneal

Usage notes

General dictionaries say that the membrane is usually broken at first intercourse,^[14][12] but Stedman's medical dictionary describes it as very variable in appearance and often absent even in virgins, and says that it can rupture for a variety of reasons.^[13] The capitalised Hymen is the Greek and Roman god of marriage, which Merriam-Webster Unabridged records from 1567 and the OED from before 1593.^[3][6] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and the OED also list a lowercase or capitalised hymen for marriage or a wedding song, now archaic or rare.^[3][6] Sources differ on the connection with the membrane: Etymonline thinks the god is not directly connected, though folk etymology linked them;^[8] Klein and Merriam-Webster derive the god's name from a wedding cry;^[9][3] and Weekley and Partridge do connect the two.^[15][16]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
16. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul