leper

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English lepre, also leper,^[2] probably borrowed from Old French lepre (“person with leprosy”), the Anglo-Norman form, recorded from about 1275.^[3][4][5] The Anglo-Norman noun probably arose from the same form meaning leprosy, reanalysed as if it ended in an agent suffix; the use for a person may also partly have arisen in the same way within English, from the earlier English word for the disease,^[3][6] which the Shorter Oxford, Hoad, Barnhart and the Oxford Dictionary of English see used attributively, as in Middle English “lepre man”.^{[7][8][9][10][11]} Barnhart also considers a development from leprous.^[9] The Old French word for leprosy, also liepre, is from Late Latin lepra,^[3][9][6] from Ancient Greek λέπρα (léprā, “leprosy”),^[9][12][11] the feminine of λεπρός (leprós, “scaly”) used as a noun,^[6][13][12] from λέπος (lépos, “scale”) or λεπίς (lepís, “scale”),^[13][8][6] related to λέπω (lépō, “to peel”).^[9][12][6] Etymonline and Barnhart trace them to Proto-Indo-European *lep- (“to peel”), with the Latin lepidus (“pleasant, charming”), Old English læfer (“rush, reed”) and Lithuanian lopas (“patch, rag”) as cognates.^{[6][9][12][5]} The OED compares Spanish lepra (13th century), Portuguese lepra (15th century) and Italian lebbra (13th century).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Leprosy, the disease: about 1275, in the Kentish Sermons;^[3] Barnhart has it about 1250, in Genesis and Exodus.^[9] The sense "person with leprosy" follows before 1398, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus.^[3][9][2]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English lepre was the disease itself, and a sufferer was a leprous man: Skeat quotes Wycliffe, "The lepre of him was clensid".^[14][12] The disease sense was also used figuratively, of sin, and lasted until the 17th century.^[3][2] Ayto dates the shift to "person suffering from leprosy" to the 14th century,^[13] and by the mid-15th century other nouns for the disease were being coined,^[6] among them leprosy, recorded from 1535.^[9] The adjective leper, leprous, was used from about 1400 into the 17th century.^[3][7] From before 1555, in Latimer, a leper was figuratively a person to be shunned, an outcast.^[3][5] From 1602 the word was also a verb, to infect or disfigure as with leprosy, or to ostracize.^[3] In Irish and British children's slang leper is a general term of abuse.^[15] In Dorset dialect a leper was a bed of stone in the Swanage quarries.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1275 – leprosy, the disease (obsolete by 1659).^[3] Barnhart dates it about 1250.^[9]
• before 1398 – a person with leprosy.^[3][9]
• c. 1400 – adjective, leprous (obsolete).^[3][2]
• before 1555 – figuratively, a person to be shunned; an outcast.^[3]
• 1602 – verb, to infect or disfigure as with leprosy; to ostracize.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (old-fashioned, offensive) A person who has leprosy.^[17][5][18]
2. A person shunned by others for moral or social reasons; a pariah or outcast: After the scandal he was treated as a leper in the village.^{[5][18][17][3]}
3. (obsolete, c. 1275–1659) Leprosy.^[3][7][2]

Related words

• leprosy
• leprous
• lepra

Usage notes

Leper was once the standard word for a person with leprosy, but medicine no longer uses it and it is now considered offensive.^[17]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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 g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, 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 c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
16. ^ 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)
17. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
18. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin