impressionable

Etymology

It is borrowed from French impressionnable,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from impressionner (“to impress”),^[2][5][6] from impression, from Latin impressiō (“a pressing into”), from imprimō (“to press into”).^[6][7] Etymonline notes that the earliest English examples occur in translations from French and in French settings,^[7] and the OED quotes an 1835 writer who calls it a word the French use so happily.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Dictionary.com also analyse it as from English impression + -able, comparing the French word.^[3][8] The older English word of this meaning was impressible, from the 1620s.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of people or their feelings, easily impressed or influenced: 1833, in the Foreign Quarterly Review.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to 1827,^[7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged to 1836,^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1825–35.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word was first used of minds and characters open to outside influence, and the Shorter Oxford dates it to the mid 19th century.^[2][4] From 1878 it was also applied to things in the literal sense "capable of being impressed".^[2][3] From 1889 it was used, in photography, of materials sensitive to physical or chemical influences.^[2] The derivative impressionability is recorded from 1831.^[7]

Timeline

• 1833 – of people or their feelings, easily impressed or influenced.^[2]
• 1878 – of things, capable of being impressed.^[2]
• 1889 – sensitive to physical or chemical influences.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Easily influenced or affected, especially because young or naive: The film was judged unsuitable for impressionable teenagers.^[9][3][2]
2. Capable of being impressed, moulded or printed on.^[3][2][4]

Word family

• impressionability
• impressionably
• unimpressionable

Related words

• impression
• impress
• impressible
• imprint

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins