perspicuous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin perspicuus (“transparent, clearly visible, evident, lucid”),^[2][3][4][5] from perspiciō (“to see through, look closely at”),^[2][3][4][6] formed from per- (“through”) and speciō (“to look”),^[7] with the adjective suffix -uus;^[2][7] the English ending is -ous.^[2][5][6] In post-classical Latin the adjective also meant penetrating, discerning and clear-sighted, senses found in Augustine.^[2] Middle French had a similar perspicu (“transparent”), recorded about 1490.^[2] The word is related to perspective and perspicacious.^[4][3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Etymonline, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the late 15th century, in the sense "transparent".^[3][8][9] Barnhart gives 1584, in the sense "clear-sighted", for a record once dated 1477.^[5] The revised OED (2005) has its first record in 1570, in Henry Billingsley's translation of Euclid's Elements, meaning easily understood or clearly expressed,^[2] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates that sense to 1570 as well.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Beside "easily understood", recorded from 1570 (from the 1580s in Etymonline, 1586 in Barnhart),^[2][3][5] it meant "conspicuous in rank or merit, eminent" from 1582 and "easily seen" from 1586, both now obsolete.^[2] From 1584 it also meant "discerning, acute", the sense of perspicacious, with which the OED compares it.^[2][5] Barnhart notes that the sense of lucidity appears in the noun perspicuity as early as 1546.^[5] Johnson (1755) still listed "transparent; clear; such as may be seen through" as the first meaning,^[11] but that sense is now rare or obsolete,^[2][10][8] and the word survives mainly for clear, lucid speech and writing.^[12][10]

Timeline

• 1570 – easily understood, clearly expressed.^[2][10]
• 1582 – conspicuous in rank or merit, eminent (obsolete by 1835).^[2]
• 1584 – discerning, penetrating.^[2][5]
• 1586 – easily seen, conspicuous to the eye (obsolete by 1816).^[2]
• 1593 – of a writer or speaker, clear in style or meaning (obsolete by 1890).^[2]
• 1599 – transparent, translucent (now rare).^[2]
• 1657 – keen of sight (obsolete, rare).^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Clearly expressed and easy to understand; lucid: The manual gave a perspicuous account of a tangled procedure.^[12][10][2]
2. Perspicacious; discerning.^[2][8]
3. (obsolete) Transparent or translucent.^[10][8] The OED calls this sense now rare.^[2]

Word family

• perspicuously
• perspicuousness
• perspicuity
• unperspicuous

Related words

• perspicacious
• perspicacity
• perspective

References

1. ^ a b 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 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 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ 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
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins