parietal

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin parietālis (“of walls”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Latin pariēs (“wall”), a word of unknown origin.^[3][5][2] The OED notes that the Latin adjective was used of a plant in the 4th century and as a noun in Chauliac's work of 1363, which also names the parietal bones,^[2] and compares Middle French pariétal, an anatomical adjective from 1493.^[2] Hoad, Weekley and the Shorter Oxford give French or Late Latin as the source,^[7][8][9] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged a Middle French form.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The parietal bone, and as an adjective, designating that bone: about 1425, in an English translation of Guy de Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie.^[2][5] Etymonline dates it to the early 15th century, "pertaining to the walls of a cavity in the body".^[3] The Shorter Oxford dates the noun only to the early 16th century and the adjective to the late 16th,^[9] and Dictionary.com gives 1590–1600.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed mostly anatomical: Johnson (1755) defined it as "constituting the sides or walls", with a quotation from Sharp's Surgery about the parietal bones.^[12] In the 19th century it spread to botany, for ovules attached to the wall of the ovary (1819), to the walls of any organ or cavity (1847), to the shells of molluscs (1854) and to the parietal lobe of the brain (1861).^[2] A general sense, "of or relating to a wall", recorded from 1776, is now used chiefly of prehistoric cave paintings.^[2][9] In the United States, from 1836 in Harvardiana, the word was used of the rules for students living within the walls of a college,^[2][3][7] and parietals came to mean the rules on visits by the opposite sex to dormitories.^[10][2] Etymonline compares intramural for this sense.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – noun, the parietal bone; adjective, designating it.^[2][5]
• 1776 – of or relating to a wall, mural.^[2]
• 1819 – in botany, attached to the wall of an ovary.^[2]
• 1836 – in the United States, relating to the rules for students living in a college; noun, plural, those rules.^[2] Etymonline dates the college sense to 1837.^[3]
• 1847 – of or belonging to the wall of a bodily organ or cavity.^[2]
• 1861 – designating the middle lobe of a cerebral hemisphere.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of, relating to or forming the walls of a bodily cavity or organ: the parietal peritoneum.^[10][13][2]
2. Of or relating to the upper back part of the head, especially the two parietal bones that form the roof and sides of the skull.^[10][13][2]
3. (botany) Of an ovule or placenta, attached to the wall of the ovary.^[10][13][2]
4. (US) Relating to residence within a college, or to the rules that govern it.^[13][10][2]
5. Of or relating to a wall, especially of prehistoric cave paintings.^[2][9]

Noun

1. A parietal bone, or another parietal part such as a scale or plate.^[10][13][2]
2. (US) In the plural, the rules governing visits by members of the opposite sex to college dormitories.^[10][2]

Word family

• subparietal
• biparietal
• frontoparietal
• interparietal
• transparietal
• parietal bone
• parietal cell
• parietal lobe

References

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