privation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English privacioun,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French privacion^[2][3][4] and directly borrowed from Latin prīvātiō (“a taking away”).^[2][3][4][5] The revised OED names the French side more closely as Anglo-Norman privacioun and Anglo-Norman and Middle French privacion, also privation, recorded in Old French from 1290;^[5] the Anglo-Norman Dictionary has it from the second quarter of the 13th century.^[6] The Latin noun is formed from the past-participle stem of prīvō (“to deprive, rob, strip”),^[2][5] and so belongs with private.^[2][7][8] The Oxford Dictionary of English and the Shorter Oxford derive the word from Latin alone.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The condition of lacking an attribute or quality; a want or absence: before 1398, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De Proprietatibus Rerum, where baldness is called priuacioun.^[5][4][3]

Semantic evolution

The word entered English as a learned term: Latin had used it for removal or absence, and in post-classical times for negation and for the eighth of Aristotle's categories, so the first English sense, the lack of a quality that a thing would properly have, belonged to philosophy.^[5] Before 1425 it was also used of the action of taking something away, in the Prick of Conscience,^[5] a use Etymonline dates to the mid-15th century.^[2] In law and in the Church it meant removal from an office or position, recorded from 1444 to 1885;^[5] Latin and French had already used it so.^[5] Johnson (1755) knew the word in the abstract senses, as the removal of a thing or quality and as the act of degrading from rank or office.^[11] The sense now usual, the lack of food and other essentials, is recorded from 1768, in Blackstone's Commentaries,^[5] though Etymonline and Barnhart first find it in 1790.^[2][3] The OED notes that French apparently has no parallel for this use until slightly later, in 1776.^[5]

Timeline

• before 1398 – the condition of lacking an attribute or quality.^[5][4][3]
• before 1425 – the action of depriving; deprivation.^[5]
• 1444 – removal of a person from an office or position (obsolete by 1885).^[5]
• 1768 – the lack of food and other essentials; an extreme hardship.^[5] Etymonline and Barnhart date this sense to 1790.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Lack of the necessities or comforts of life, or the hardship that results: They lived in privation for years after the flood.^[12][7][5]
2. An instance of such hardship, usually in the plural: the privations of life at a polar station.^[7][5]
3. The act of depriving, or the state of being deprived; deprivation.^[13][12][5]
4. (logic, philosophy) The absence of a quality that a thing would normally have.^{[12][5][10][13]}
5. (obsolete, 1444–1885) Removal of a person from rank or office.^[5][13][11]

Related words

• private
• deprive
• deprivation

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ 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)
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ 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.
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster