pimple

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English pimple, also pimpel and pinple,^[2][3] of uncertain origin.^[4][5][6] The OED thinks it probably continues an unattested noun corresponding to Old English pipeliende (“pimply, affected with herpes”), with an intrusive m before p.^[4] Other dictionaries likewise see a nasalised form related to piplian (“to grow pimply”),^{[7][8][9][10]} the present participle being recorded as pipligende and pypelgende.^[2][10] Beyond that a connection with Latin papula (“pimple”) seems likely to the OED, but is hard to explain by sound change.^[4] The Shorter Oxford also compares Lithuanian pãpas (“nipple”),^[8] and Klein posits an imitative base *pap- (“to swell”).^[11] Hoad calls the word of unknown origin beyond Old English and parallel to the dialect word pumple.^[7] Older proposals were Middle French pompette (“a pimple on the nose or chin”), offered by Johnson and Skeat and compared by Weekley,^[12][13][14] who suggested a thinned form of pumple.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small inflamed spot on the skin: before 1398, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus,^[4][2] and 1373, as pymple, in Barnhart.^[5] It appears earlier as the surname Pympel, about 1311.^[4][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Middle English applied it to swellings of the skin of people and dogs, and to eruptions on the eyelid or in the lung.^[2] Johnson (1755) calls it "a small red pustule".^[12] From 1582, in Stanyhurst's Virgil, it could be anything resembling a pimple,^[4] which Merriam-Webster extends to a slight rise in the ground^[3] and Collins to the bumps on a table tennis bat.^[15] The verb, to cover with pimples, dates from 1604, in Middleton,^[4] and Pepys has the intransitive use in 1665.^[4] Slang took it two ways: a drinking companion, in Congreve's The Way of the World (1700),^[4][16] and the head, first in boxing talk, from 1811.^[4][16] The English Dialect Dictionary still records this sense of the head in Suffolk, the Isle of Wight and Wiltshire.^[17] Pimply dates from 1748, in Richardson's Clarissa.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1311 – Pympel as a surname.^[4][5]
• before 1398 – a small inflamed spot on the skin.^[4][2] Barnhart has 1373.^[5]
• 1582 – a small rounded lump or swelling.^[4]
• 1604 – verb, to cover with pimples.^[4]
• 1665 – intransitive, to become pimply.^[4]
• 1700 – a drinking companion.^[4][16]
• 1811 – slang, the head.^[4][16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small, inflamed spot on the skin; a papule or pustule: a pimple on his nose.^[15][3][4]
2. A small rounded lump or swelling, such as a slight rise of the ground, or one of the bumps on a table tennis bat.^[3][4][15]
3. (colloquial, rare) A person's head.^[4][16][17]
4. (obsolete, rare) A friend, a drinking companion.^[4][16]

Verb

1. To cover or mark with pimples or with something like them: Rain pimpled the surface of the pond.^[3][4]
2. To become pimply or develop small swellings.^[4]

Word family

• pimpled
• pimply

Related words

• papule
• papilla
• pap

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b 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 Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
16. ^ a b c d e f Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
17. ^ a b 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)