iris

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin īris (“rainbow, iris of the eye, iris plant”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Ancient Greek ἶρις (îris, “rainbow”),^[3][7][8] whose stem ἰριδ- (irid-) appears in iridescent and iridium.^[7][9][10] The Greek word also meant any brightly coloured circle, the iris plant and the iris of the eye,^[3][8] and was the name of Iris, the messenger of the gods, who appeared as the rainbow.^[3][4][9] Its origin is uncertain; it is traditionally derived from Proto-Indo-European *weyh₁- (“to bend, twist”),^[3][2] which Klein connects with the original form *ϝῖρις (*wîris), literally "something bent or curved", and with ἴτυς (ítus, “rim”), vieō (“to bend, twist”) and Old English wiþiġ (“willow”).^[11] The anatomical sense came through New Latin iris.^[12][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

As the name of a flowering plant: 1373, a plant with brightly coloured flowers used in medicine;^[4] Etymonline dates the plant name to the late 14th century.^[3] The OED's earliest sense is a kind of hexagonal crystal mentioned by Pliny, in Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (a1387).^[7]

Semantic evolution

The coloured membrane of the eye was named iris in the early 15th century,^[3][4] because it is the part that gives the eye its colour;^[3] the OED's first quotation is from 1525.^[7] The sense "rainbow" is recorded from 1490, in Caxton,^[7] and its transferred use for any rainbow-like play of colours from Shakespeare.^[7] The goddess herself appears in English from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2.^[7] The botanical genus name Iris dates from 1578, in Lyte's Herball.^[7][12] In photography, from 1911, the word named the adjustable diaphragm of a lens, and film-makers spoke of iris-in and iris-out for opening and closing shots.^[7] Johnson (1755) defined it first as the rainbow.^[13]

Timeline

• 1373 – a flowering plant.^[4]
• a1387 – a prismatic crystal.^[7]
• early 15th century – the coloured part of the eye;^[3][4] 1525 in the OED.^[7]
• 1490 – a rainbow.^[7]
• 1578 – the plant genus Iris.^[7][12]
• a1616 – the goddess Iris, in Shakespeare.^[7]
• 1816 – verb, to make iridescent.^[7]
• 1911 – (photography) an iris diaphragm.^[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The round, coloured, muscular membrane of the eye that surrounds and controls the size of the pupil.
2. A plant of the genus Iris, with sword-shaped leaves and showy flowers of three upright and three drooping parts.
3. (photography) An adjustable diaphragm that controls the amount of light passing through a lens; an iris diaphragm.
4. (literary) A rainbow, or a play of colours like one.

Word family

• irid-
• irido-
• copper iris
• iris diaphragm
• bearded iris
• Spanish iris
• Japanese iris

Related words

• iridescent
• iridium
• iridology
• iritis
• orris
• rainbow
• pupil

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.