placid

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin placidus (“pleasing, favourable, gentle, mild, calm”),^[2][3][4] which is formed on placeō (“to please”) with the suffix -idus.^[2] Etymonline, Barnhart, Hoad, the Shorter Oxford and Skeat take it also borrowed from French placide,^{[5][6][7][8][9]} but the OED, in its revised entry of 2006, only compares the French adjective, recorded from 1495 and rare before the 19th century, with Spanish plácido, Portuguese plácido and Italian placido.^[2] Barnhart thinks it is probably a back-formation from placidity, which he dates to 1619.^[6] Dictionary.com adds that the Latin verb originally meant to calm,^[10] and the American Heritage Dictionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *plāk-.^[3] Ayto puts the word in the family of please, with complacent and placebo, and takes placate from the same base.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Mild, gentle, calm: 1614, in T. Jackson's commentaries on the Apostles' Creed,^[2][4] which is earlier than the 1620s of Etymonline and the 1626 record of Barnhart, in Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

English took the word mainly in the Latin sense "calm", and the older Latin sense "pleasing, welcome" appears only once, in O. Felltham's Resolves (1628).^[2] A use for someone free of anger towards another person is likewise recorded only in 1663.^[2] Johnson (1755) separated "gentle; quiet; not turbulent", quoting Bacon on the motion of the spirits, from "soft; kind; mild", quoting Milton on a placid aspect.^[12] Modern dictionaries keep the same two sides, a person not easily upset and a thing such as water or a way of life that is undisturbed.^[13][3]

Timeline

• 1614 – mild, gentle, calm; of a person, not easily upset.^[2][4]
• 1628 – pleasing, agreeable (obsolete and rare).^[2]
• 1663 – free from anger towards another (obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a person or animal, not easily upset or excited; mild: a placid old pony that never shied at traffic.^{[13][3][14][2]}
2. Calm and peaceful; not agitated or disturbed, especially of water: the placid surface of the pond.^[13][3][4]
3. Free of interruption or trouble; uneventful: a placid year in the village.^[3][4]

Word family

• placidity
• placidly
• placidness
• unplacid

Related words

• placate
• placable
• please
• complacent
• placebo
• implacable

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
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 Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins