Etymologically
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iris

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈaɪ.ɹɪs/[1]

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

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.