insecurity

Etymology

It is probably borrowed from Medieval Latin insēcūritās (“danger, hazard”),^[2][3][4][5] from insēcūrus (“insecure”),^[3] from Latin in- (“not”) and sēcūrus (“free from care, secure”),^[2][3][5] itself from sē- (“free from”) and cūra (“care”).^[3] The Shorter Oxford allows that it may instead have been formed in English from the prefix in- and security.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Uncertainty, lack of assurance or confidence: 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.^[2] Etymonline dates both this sense and "the state of being unsafe" to the 1640s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word had two branches from the start: the subjective one, a person's lack of assurance (1646), and the objective one, the condition of being unsafe or liable to give way or fail (1654).^[2][6] A plural for particular insecure things or circumstances followed in 1649.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as "uncertainty; want of reasonable confidence", quoting Browne's phrase "with what insecurity of truth we ascribe effects".^[7] The specialized psychological sense, a person's lasting feeling of inadequacy and anxiety, is recorded from 1917, in a translation of Alfred Adler,^[2][3] and the adjective insecure took the same sense by 1935.^[3]

Timeline

• 1646 – uncertainty, lack of assurance or confidence.^[2][3]
• 1649 – with a plural, an insecure thing or circumstance.^[2]
• 1654 – the state of being unsafe; liability to give way or fail.^[2][6]
• 1755 – Johnson defines it as uncertainty, want of reasonable confidence.^[7]
• 1917 – in psychology.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Lack of confidence or assurance; anxiety about oneself or one's position: His jokes hid a deep insecurity.^[5][2][6]
2. Lack of safety or stability; the state of being likely to fail, give way or suffer loss: the insecurity of seasonal work.^[5][2][6]
3. An insecure circumstance or thing: the small insecurities of freelance life.^[5][2]

Related words

• insecure
• security
• secure
• sure

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ 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
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.