Etymologically
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livelihood

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈlaɪvlihʊd/[1]
  • US: /ˈlaɪvlihʊd/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English livelode, also liflode,[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old English līflād (“course of life, way of life”),[6][3][7][8][9] formed from līf (“life”) and lād (“course, way; maintenance, support”), the ancestors of life and lode.[6][10][3][11] Old High German lībleita (“provisions, means of living”) is a similar formation.[6][12][3] In the 16th century the ending was remodelled by association with lively and with nouns in -hood,[6][10][11][4][13] and Barnhart and Etymonline add the influence of lyvelyhede (“liveliness, vigour”), recorded from the mid-15th century and formed from lyvely and -hede.[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The course of a person's life, lifetime, or way of life and conduct: in the Old English Rule of St Benedict,[6][9] about 1000 according to Barnhart.[2]

Semantic evolution

From "course of life" the word passed to what life is kept up by: a means of living, from about 1300,[6][3] and food or physical sustenance, from about 1325.[6] Bosworth–Toller already notes the Middle English use for "that by which life is supported".[9] Middle English also used it for income or revenue (before 1325 to 1789), and since 1438 it has also meant an estate or inheritance, a sense common in the 15th and 16th centuries.[6] The old sense "course of life" died out in the 17th century.[6][8] The modern spelling is found in the King James Bible of 1611,[2][3] and Johnson (1755), thinking it a corruption of livelode, defined it as "support of life; maintenance; means of living".[14] It is now used especially in earn a livelihood.[6][8]

Timeline

  • c. 1000 – Old English līflād, course of life, conduct (obsolete by 1669).[6][2]
  • c. 1300 – a means of living.[6][3]
  • c. 1325 – food, physical sustenance.[6]
  • before 1325 – income, revenue (obsolete by 1789).[6]
  • 1438 – property yielding an income; an estate.[6]
  • c. 1450 – figurative, spiritual or emotional sustenance.[6]
  • 1611 – the spelling livelihood, in the King James Bible.[2][3]
  • 1755 – Johnson: support of life, maintenance.[14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A means of supporting oneself; the work or income by which one lives: The drought threatened the farmers' livelihood.[15][4][6]
  2. (obsolete, Old English–1669) The course of one's life; way of life, conduct.[6][8]

Usage notes

A noun of the same spelling, formed from lively and -hood, meant liveliness from 1566; it was common in the 17th century and later only poetic and archaic.[6][8] Fitzedward Hall (1873) described the modern word as "a marriage between the surviving partners": the form of the word meaning liveliness and the sense of livelode.[3] Collins records livelod and livelood as literary forms.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins