limpid

Etymology

It is borrowed from French limpide and directly borrowed from Latin limpidus (“clear, transparent”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The French adjective is recorded from the 15th century,^[3] and the Latin one is also the source of Spanish límpido and Italian limpido.^[3] Its further origin is not settled: Barnhart calls it uncertain,^[4] while the OED and Etymonline connect it, with "probably" and "related to", to the early form lumpa of lympha (“clear liquid”), the source of lymph.^[2][3][7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Klein derive it outright from limpa (“water; water goddess”),^[5][8] and Klein adds that the form was influenced by liquidus (“flowing, fluid”), so that the adjective first meant "as clear as water".^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a fluid, free of anything cloudy or suspended; clear: 1609, in the second edition of Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall.^[2][9] The full Barnhart, Merriam-Webster Unabridged and the 1989 edition of the OED give 1613, also from Cawdrey.^[4][5][10] Etymonline says about 1600,^[3] Dictionary.com 1605–15,^[11] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English late Middle English.^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defined it as "clear; pure; transparent", with a quotation on springs from Woodward's Natural History.^[14][2] The sense passed from liquids to things that are not physical: the OED has it of immaterial things from 1649,^[2] and Mapping Metaphor places the link between liquids and intelligibility in 1600–1649.^[15] From there it came to describe a style or a piece of writing that is plain and easy to follow,^[5][16] and things free of guile or complication.^[12] Modern dictionaries add the sense "calm, untroubled".^[5][16][17]

Timeline

• 1609 – of fluids, clear and free of suspended matter.^[2][9]
• 1649 – of immaterial things, and figuratively.^[2][10]
• 1656 – limpidity, clearness.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Completely clear and transparent; pellucid: You could count the pebbles through the limpid water of the pool.^[5][16][2]
2. Of a style or writing, clear and simple; easy to understand: The biography is told in limpid prose.^[5][16][17]
3. Calm and untroubled; serene.^[5][16][17]

Word family

• limpidity
• limpidly
• limpidness

Related words

• lymph
• lymphatic
• liquid

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
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. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus, University of Glasgow, mappingmetaphor.arts.gla.ac.uk
16. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin