infertility

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French infertilité (“unfruitfulness, barrenness”) and directly borrowed from Late Latin infertilitas (“barrenness, unfruitfulness”),^[2][3][4] from infertilis (“unfruitful”), the source of infertile,^[2][3][5] which is formed from Latin in- (“not”) and fertilis (“fruitful, productive”).^[3][2] The OED records the French noun from 1442 and the Late Latin one from the 4th century;^[2] the Shorter Oxford derives the English word from Latin alone.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The inability of land to sustain crops; barrenness: 1537, in a Scottish document printed in the Scottish Historical Review.^[2] The 1989 edition of the OED dated the word only to 1610,^[6] Etymonline to about 1600,^[3] and the Shorter Oxford to the mid 16th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The word first described soil and land, and was soon used figuratively, from 1566, for a lack of ideas or inventiveness.^[2] From 1607, in a translation of de Serres on silkworms, it was used of an egg or seed unable to produce a new individual, a sense the French word had from 1603; it was applied to plants from before 1682 (Browne) and to people and animals unable to produce offspring from 1693.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as unfruitfulness, with a quotation from Hale about the soil.^[7] In current dictionaries the chief sense is the inability to conceive children.^[8][4][1]

Timeline

• 1537 – barrenness of land.^[2]
• 1566 – figurative, a lack of ideas or creativity.^[2]
• 1607 – of an egg or seed, inability to produce a new individual.^[2]
• before 1682 – of a plant, inability to produce fruit or seeds, in Browne.^[2]
• 1693 – of a person or animal, inability to produce offspring.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The state of being unable to produce offspring, especially a persistent inability to conceive a child.^[8][2][1]
2. The inability of soil or land to support crops or other plants; barrenness.^[2][4][7]
3. Of a plant, egg or seed, the inability to produce fruit, seeds or a new individual.^[2]
4. Figuratively, a lack of ideas or inventiveness.^[2]

Related words

• fertility
• infertile
• fertile

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin