perspiration

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French perspiration (“excretion of moisture through the pores of the skin”),^[2][3][4][5] formed in French from perspirer (“to perspire”) with the suffix -ation.^[2][3] The OED dates the Middle French word to 1539,^[2] Etymonline to the 1560s.^[6] The verb is from Latin perspīrō (“to blow or breathe constantly, breathe through”),^[6][7][4] formed from per (“through”) and spīrō (“to breathe, blow”),^[6][7] the source of spirit;^[6][8] Etymonline traces the prefix to Proto-Indo-European *per- (“forward, through”).^[6] The OED compares post-classical New Latin perspīrātiō, recorded about 1605 in a British source,^[2] and Dictionary.com takes the English word from that New Latin noun, literally "a breathing through".^[9] Skeat likewise glossed the Latin form as "a breathing through".^[7] The English verb perspire is also from the Latin verb.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The excretion of moisture through the pores of the skin, at first only unseen, as vapour: 1583, in Barrough's Methode of Phisicke.^[2][3] Etymonline instead dates the word to the 1610s, in the now obsolete sense "a breathing through", and the sense of unseen moisture passing through the skin to the 1620s;^[6] Dictionary.com gives 1605–15 and 1620–30 for the two senses.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word first named the unseen passing of moisture through the skin, what the physicians called insensible perspiration, and only later also visible sweating.^[2][4] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as excretion by the pores of the skin, quoting Arbuthnot on "insensible perspiration".^[10] In the 17th century it was also used more loosely: for breathing out or blowing through (1611–1772), for evaporation (1652–1720) and, in botany, for what is now called transpiration (1664–1796).^[2][11] From 1725 it also meant the moisture itself, sweat,^[2][6] and Etymonline sees in this its later use as a polite word for sweat.^[6] Dictionary.com notes that perspiration is often felt as the more refined word, while sweat is the stronger one and the only one used of animals and objects.^[9] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also records it for hard, vigorous effort,^[3] the sense of the saying "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration", which Harper's Monthly attributed to Thomas Edison in 1932.^[12]

Timeline

• 1583 – the excretion of moisture through the pores of the skin.^[2][3][11]
• 1611 – the action of breathing out or blowing through (obsolete by 1772).^[2][11]
• 1652 – evaporation (obsolete by 1720).^[2][11]
• 1664 – in botany, transpiration (obsolete by 1796).^[2][11]
• 1725 – the moisture itself; sweat.^[2][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. Sweat; the salty fluid that the sweat glands give off through the pores of the skin: Beads of perspiration stood on the runner's forehead.^[3][13][14]
2. The act or process of perspiring, whether unseen, as vapour that evaporates at once, or visibly, as drops on the skin.^[14][3][13]
3. Hard, vigorous effort, of the kind that makes a person sweat.^[3]
4. (obsolete) The action of breathing out or blowing through (1611–1772).^[2][4]

Word family

• perspiratory

Related words

• perspire
• transpiration
• spirit
• respiration
• inspiration
• transpire

Usage notes

In the United States the form prespiration, with the r moved, has been recorded in regional speech from the South, the Ozarks, Texas, New York and New England since 1899.^[15] Merriam-Webster Unabridged marks this pronunciation as substandard.^[3]

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ 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
5. ^ 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c d e Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
12. ^ Martin, Gary, The Phrase Finder: Meaning and Origin of Phrases, Sayings, Clichés and Quotes, https://www.phrases.org.uk
13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press