laxative

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English laxatif, also laxative,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French laxatif^[2][4][5] and Medieval Latin laxātīvus (“loosening”),^[2][4][5][6] from laxātus, the past participle of laxō (“to loosen, relax”),^[4][5][6] from laxus (“loose, wide”).^[4][5][6][7] Barnhart takes the English noun as the French adjective used as a noun,^[7] and Merriam-Webster as the Middle English adjective so used.^[3] The Anglo-Norman laxatif is recorded from the second quarter of the 13th century, as adjective and noun.^[8] The Oxford Dictionary of English calls the Latin word late rather than medieval.^[9] The Latin word had meant "assuaging" in Late Latin before it took on the medical sense.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A purging medicine: the first records are in Chaucer, in the Knight's Tale about 1385 in the MED^[2] and the Nun's Priest's Tale about 1386 in the OED.^[10] Barnhart dates both noun and adjective a little earlier, to 1373, and gives the adjective first as "having freely moving bowels".^[7] Chaucer uses the word four times.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The general idea was loosening or relaxing.^[12][4] Middle English applied it to anything that loosened the bowels, but also to a drug that expelled bad humours, a sense often hard to tell from the first, and even to an emetic.^[2] Applied to the patient rather than the remedy, it meant having loose bowels,^[2][10] and in the 15th and 16th centuries the noun could mean the flux itself: in Lydgate, he had A laxatyf That he shortly lost hys lyf.^[2][10] It was then carried over to speech and feeling: a person who could not hold in words or emotions was laxative from 1607,^[10] and Milton used it in 1645 for something that gave remission or relief.^[10] Johnson (1755) keeps only the power to ease costiveness.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1385 – noun, a purging medicine.^[2][10] Barnhart gives 1373.^[7]
• before 1387 – adjective, of a drink, causing looseness of the bowels.^[2][7]
• c. 1430 – noun, looseness of the bowels (obsolete by 1527).^[10][2]
• 1546 – adjective, of the bowels or the constitution, loose.^[10]
• 1607 – adjective, unable to hold in one's speech or emotions.^[10]
• 1645 – adjective, giving remission or relief, in Milton.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A medicine or food that loosens the bowels and relieves constipation; a mild cathartic.^[12][10][3]
2. (obsolete, c. 1430–1527) Looseness of the bowels; flux.^[10][2]

Adjective

1. Causing the bowels to empty and relieving constipation.^[12][10][3]
2. (rare) Of the bowels, loose; of a disease, marked by looseness of the bowels.^[10][14][3]
3. (obsolete) Running freely, unable to hold back words or emotions.^[10][3]

Word family

• laxatively
• laxativeness

Related words

• lax
• laxation
• relax

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press