individuality

Etymology

It is formed from English individual + -ity,^[2][3][4][5] and Etymonline and the Oxford Dictionary of English take it in early use also from Medieval Latin individualitas.^[3][6][4] The OED only compares the Latin noun, recorded from the 12th century (from the 13th in British sources), and Middle French individualité (“characteristic attributes of an individual”), recorded before 1472.^[2] The adjective goes back through Medieval Latin individualis to Latin individuus (“indivisible”), from in- (“not”) and dividuus (“divisible”), from dīvidō (“to divide”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

An individual entity, especially a person seen as having a distinctive personality: 1600, in Clement Edmondes's Observations upon Caesar's Commentaries.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates the word to 1600,^[7] while Etymonline gives the 1610s^[3] and the Collegiate 1614.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The sense that became the main one, the sum of the qualities that set a person or thing apart from others of its kind, is recorded from 1614, in Selden's Titles of Honor;^[2] Etymonline dates "the aggregate of one's idiosyncrasies" to the 1610s.^[3] In the plural the word could mean the idiosyncrasies themselves, from 1642 in Henry More, a use now rare.^[2] Following the old sense of individual, "indivisible", it also meant indivisibility or inseparability from 1631,^[2] now rare or archaic.^[2][8] The sense of existing as a separate, single entity is recorded from 1635,^[2] or the 1650s in Etymonline,^[3] and it is the only one Johnson gave in 1755: "separate or distinct existence".^[9] From about 1740, in Bolingbroke, it was used of a person's independence from a group or from the State.^[2] In 19th-century phrenology it named the faculty of perceiving things as separate, a use now chiefly historical.^[2]

Timeline

• 1600 – an individual entity; a person with a distinctive personality.^[2]
• 1614 – the qualities that distinguish a person or thing from others of the same kind.^[2]
• 1631 – indivisibility, inseparability (now rare).^[2]
• 1635 – separate existence as a single entity.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the 1650s.^[3]
• 1642 – in the plural, idiosyncrasies (now rare).^[2]
• c. 1740 – independence from a group or from the State.^[2]
• 1818 – in phrenology, the faculty of perceiving things as separate.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The distinctive character or personality that sets a person or thing apart: The old farmhouse kept its individuality through every renovation.^[10][7][4]
2. The qualities by which one person or thing is told apart from others; identity.^[10][2]
3. The state of being a separate entity; separate or distinct existence.^[10][8][2]
4. An individual; a person.^[8][2]
5. In the plural, individual traits or idiosyncrasies.^[4][2]
6. (archaic) The state of being indivisible; inseparability.^[8][2][4]

Related words

• individual
• individualism
• individuate
• indivisible
• divide

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 r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ 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
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins