palsy

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English palesie, also palasie and parlesie,^[2][3][4][5] borrowed from Anglo-Norman parlesie, also parleisie (1212 or earlier) and palesie,^[6][2][3] variants of Old French paralisie,^[6][7][8] from a Romance alteration of the Latin word, Vulgar Latin *paralysia,^[2][7][9][8] from Latin paralysis,^[2][10][11] from Ancient Greek παράλυσις (parálusis, “disabling, paralysis; literally a loosening”).^[5][2] The Greek noun is from παραλύω (paralúō, “to loosen, disable, enfeeble”), formed from παρά (pará, “beside”) and λύω (lúō, “to unfasten, loosen”),^[5][2] which Etymonline traces to Proto-Indo-European *leu- (“to loosen, divide, cut apart”).^[2] Weekley compares Italian paralisia and Spanish perlesía.^[9] The word is a doublet of paralysis, borrowed later directly from Latin.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Paralysis or weakness of all or part of the body: the OED's first record is from before 1275, in a text cited from the Middle English Dictionary.^[6] Barnhart dates the form palasie to about 1300 and palsie to before 1325,^[3] and Etymonline gives the early senses as weakness, numbness, paralysis, loss of the power of speech and failure of a part of the body to work.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Barnhart notes that forms with r, like parlesie, and forms without it lived side by side in Middle English, and that by the end of the 1400s they had become well separated.^[3] Chaucer has the word once, as palasie.^[12] In early use it was often the palsy, and it could also mean a person struck by palsy, a use recorded from before 1400 to 1526.^[6] The figurative sense, an influence that destroys or weakens activity or feeling, appears in Lydgate's life of St Edmund, from about 1435.^[6] An adjective palsy, palsied, is recorded from before 1500.^[6] The verb was formed from the noun in the late 16th century, first intransitive (1582, in Stanyhurst's Virgil) and then transitive (about 1615, in Chapman's Odyssey), chiefly in the figurative sense of making powerless.^[6][3][8] Johnson (1755) defined palsy as a loss of motion or feeling, or both, with coldness and wasting of the parts.^[13] Today the noun is used mostly with a word that names the type, as in cerebral palsy or Bell's palsy.^{[6][8][14][15]} In Norfolk dialect to palsy one's brain meant to bewilder, and in Yorkshire a palsy-stroke was a fit of paralysis.^[16]

Timeline

• before 1275 – paralysis or weakness of the body.^[6] Barnhart and Etymonline date the word to about 1300.^[3][2]
• before 1400 – a person affected with palsy (obsolete after 1526).^[6]
• c. 1435 – figurative, an influence that destroys or weakens activity, in Lydgate.^[6]
• before 1500 – adjective, palsied.^[6]
• 1582 – verb, intransitive, to become paralysed, in Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil.^[6][14]
• c. 1615 – verb, transitive, to paralyse, in Chapman's translation of the Odyssey.^[6][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Paralysis, especially of a named kind, often with tremors: Her uncle has had cerebral palsy since birth.^[15][14][6]
2. Uncontrollable shaking or trembling of the body or a part of it: His hands shook with the palsy as he poured the tea.^[14][8]
3. Something that weakens or cripples activity or feeling: a palsy of fear.^[14][6]

Verb

1. To affect with palsy; to paralyse, especially figuratively, to make powerless: The news palsied the whole town.^[14][6][15]
2. (rare) To become palsied; to shake as if with palsy.^[8][14][6]

Word family

• shaking palsy
• Bell's palsy
• cerebral palsy

Related words

• paralysis
• paralyse
• palsied
• analysis

Usage notes

A separate slang word palsy, a friend or friendly (as in palsy-walsy), is formed from pal and the suffix -sy; it is recorded from 1930.^[6][8]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
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. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
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. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
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)