Etymologically
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loft

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English loft, also lofte,[2] inherited from Old English loft (“air, sky”),[3][4][5][6] borrowed from Old Norse lopt (“air, sky, upper room”),[3][4][2][7] in which “-pt-” was pronounced “-ft-”.[4][6] The Norse word is from Proto-Germanic *luftuz (“air, sky”),[4][8][6] and is cognate with Old English lyft (“air, sky”), Old Saxon luft, Dutch lucht, Old High German luft, German Luft and Gothic 𐌻𐌿𐍆𐍄𐌿𐍃 (luftus, “air”).[6][4][9][10] Kroonen takes the Germanic noun as a “tu”-stem from the same root as *laubą (“foliage”), with the original meaning "roof";[10] Barnhart likewise suggests that it first meant a roof, perhaps one of leaves.[6] Orel thinks the first meaning might have been "porch" or "upper floor", but allows that the development may have gone the other way.[11] Etymonline cites Buck's comparison with Old High German louba (“roof, attic”), but notes that Watkins considers that probably a separate root.[4] The same Germanic noun gave a verb that, also through Norse, became English lift.[8][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Air, sky: in Old English, before 1000, in Ælfric's Hexameron,[3][6] which says that the earth rests on nothing but on lofte heó stynt, stands in the air.[5]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the idea behind the word is being high up in the air, and that the sense "upper room", which its Norse source already had, appears in English only in the 13th century.[8] The MED's first example of an upper room is from the romance King Horn (about 1300, composed about 1225),[2] Barnhart dates it before 1225,[6] and the OED first records it about 1385, in Chaucer.[3] The old sense "air, sky" lasted until about 1590,[3][13] and survives in the phrase on loft, which became aloft.[3][14][7] From the 16th century the word was used for a gallery in a church (1504), a room over a stable for hay (1530) and a floor or storey of a house (1526), a sense later kept only in the United States for the upper floors of a warehouse.[3][4] A pigeon house is recorded from 1735, which also gave the sense of a flock of pigeons.[3] The verb was first used for storing goods in a loft (1518) and for flooring a building (1563–1661);[3][4] the golfing sense, to hit a ball high into the air, is recorded from 1857 (1856 in Etymonline).[3][4] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as a floor, especially the top one, and traced it either to Welsh or to lift.[15]

Timeline

  • before 1000 – air, sky (obsolete by 1590).[3][6]
  • c. 1300 – an upper room.[2]
  • 1504 – a gallery in a church.[3]
  • 1518 – verb, to store goods in a loft.[3][16]
  • 1526 – a floor or storey of a house.[3]
  • 1530 – a room over a stable, for hay and straw.[3][4]
  • 1563 – verb, to floor or ceil a building (obsolete by 1661).[3]
  • 1735 – a pigeon house; a flock of pigeons.[3]
  • 1857 – verb, in golf, to hit a ball high into the air.[3]
  • 1898 – verb, to keep pigeons in a loft.[3]
  • 1938 – a sail loft.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The space under a roof; an attic or garret.[17][18][16]
  2. A large open upper floor of a warehouse or factory, especially one converted into a flat or studio.[18][17]
  3. A gallery or balcony in a church or hall: the choir loft.[17][18][3]
  4. A room over a stable for storing hay; a hayloft.[17][18][3]
  5. A raised house in which pigeons are kept, or the flock kept in it.[17][3]
  6. (golf) The backward slant of a club face, or the height it gives to a ball.[18][17]
  7. (archaic) The sky; the upper air.[16][13][3]

Verb

  1. To hit, kick or throw a ball high into the air: She lofted the ball over the defender.[17][16][3]
  2. To store something in a loft.[17][16][3]
  3. To keep pigeons in a loft.[16][3]

Word family

  • loftlike
  • loftless
  • loftsman
  • aloft
  • lofting iron
  • lofty
  • cockloft
  • hayloft
  • lift

Usage notes

In Scotland and parts of northern England the word was used for the upper floor of a two-storey house, or a garret, and was often spelled laft; in Dorset, Somerset and the Isle of Wight it took the form lote.[19]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d 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 r s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  7. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  11. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  12. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  13. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  16. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  18. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  19. ^ 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)