interval

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English intervalle, early also enterwal,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French entreval (“interval, interim”), later intervalle,^[4][5][3][6] and in part directly borrowed from Latin intervallum.^[4][5] The OED explains that the earliest English example reflects the French form entreval, while the 14th–16th century intervalle was taken anew from French.^[4] The Latin word is formed from inter (“between”) and vallum (“rampart, palisade”),^[4][7][2][8] and originally meant the space between two palisades or ramparts;^[4][5][9] Skeat explains it as the space between the rampart of a camp and the soldiers' tents.^[8] Etymonline takes vallum as a collective form of vallus (“stake”), the source of English wall.^[5][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Barnhart finds the noun before 1325, in the Cursor Mundi,^[2] and Etymonline dates the sense "time between two actions or events" to the early 14th century.^[5] The OED's first example of the period of time between two events, or between parts of an action or performance, is from Chaucer's Tale of Melibee (c1386).^[4][10]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the shift from a space between ramparts to a gap in time had already begun in classical Latin.^[9] English used the word for time first and for space later: an open space or gap between two things is recorded from 1489, in Caxton,^[4][10] and Hoad likewise dates the spatial sense to the 15th century.^[3] Johnson (1755) gave "space between places; interstice" as the first sense.^[11] The musical sense, the difference in pitch between two notes, appears in 1609, in John Dowland's translation of Ornithoparchus,^[4][10] and the phrase at intervals, now and again, from 1588.^[4] Later specialised senses include a range between two numbers in mathematics (1838; a set of numbers between two limits from 1902),^[4] and a quantity measuring the separation of events in space-time in relativity physics (1918, Eddington).^[4] In North America interval was also used for low land along a river (1684), a form of intervale.^[4][12] In Scotland the interval was the time between the hours of public worship on a Sunday.^[13] In British English it is the usual word for a break between the parts of a play or concert, where Americans say intermission.^[14][15] A rare verb interval is recorded from 1630.^[4][12]

Timeline

• before 1325 – the noun, in the Cursor Mundi.^[2]
• c1386 – the time between two events.^[4]
• 1489 – an open space between two things.^[4]
• 1588 – at intervals, now and again.^[4]
• 1609 – music, the difference of pitch between two notes.^[4]
• 1630 – verb, to come between.^[4]
• 1684 – North America, low land along a river.^[4]
• 1838 – mathematics, a range between numbers.^[4]
• 1918 – physics, separation of two events in space-time.^[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A period of time between two events, actions or states: There was a long interval between the two letters.
2. A space or distance between two points or objects: trees planted at regular intervals.
3. (chiefly British) A short break between the parts of a play, concert or film; an intermission.
4. (music) The difference in pitch between two notes.
5. (mathematics) The set of all numbers lying between two given numbers.

Word family

• intervalic
• intervallic
• intervalometer
• compound interval
• confidence interval
• contour interval

Related words

• wall
• intervale
• intermission

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
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. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster