putrefy

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English putrefien, also putrifie,^[2][3] borrowed from Middle French putrefier,^[4][3][5] also putrifier, recorded in Old French in 1314,^[4] and directly borrowed from Latin putrefaciō (“to make rotten”).^[6][3][2] The Latin verb is formed from puter (“rotten”) or putreō (“to be rotten”) and faciō (“to make”).^[7][8][3][6] Skeat points out that the French form does not match the true Latin verb,^[9] and Dictionary.com sets up Vulgar Latin *putreficō as its source.^[5] The Latin adjective is the source of putrid,^[4][6] and it goes back to Proto-Indo-European *pu- (“to rot, stink”), according to Etymonline.^[6] Compare Italian putrefare (1481).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of organic matter, to rot, and transitively to make it rot: both are first recorded before 1400, in the translation of Lanfranc's Science of Cirurgie,^[4] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates the transitive sense to the 14th century.^[3] Etymonline dates the intransitive sense to the late 14th century and the transitive to the early 15th.^[6] The Middle English Dictionary's first quotation is Lydgate's: "Aboue þe grounde ȝif þe body lie..of resoun it mvt putrefie" (about 1425).^[2]

Semantic evolution

The word was at home in medicine,^[4] where the Middle English Dictionary also has it for living tissue that festers or turns gangrenous.^[2] Alchemists applied it to the chemical decomposition of substances, a use the Oxford English Dictionary follows to 1668.^[4][2] The figurative sense of corrupting, especially morally, comes in the 16th century.^[4][8] Johnson (1755) entered only the transitive verb, with Shakespeare's bodies that "would but stink, and putrefy the air" and Bacon's "private suits putrefy the publick good".^[10] Current dictionaries divide over that transitive use: the revised Oxford English Dictionary marks it obsolete after 1863, and the Shorter Oxford calls it rare,^[4][8] but American dictionaries still list it.^[3][7]

Timeline

• before 1400 – to make putrid; to become putrid.^[4]
• before 1500 – intransitive, figurative, to become morally corrupt.^[4]
• c. 1548 – transitive, figurative, to corrupt.^[4]
• before 1550 – in alchemy, to decompose or corrode a substance (obsolete by 1668).^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. Of organic matter, to decay or decompose with a foul smell: The fallen fruit began to putrefy in the heat.^[11][7][4]
2. To cause something to rot and smell foul.^[3][7]
3. To become or make corrupt, especially morally.^[4][8]
4. (obsolete, 1471–1668) In alchemy, to decompose or corrode a substance.^[4][8][2]

Word family

• putrefiable
• putrefier
• unputrefied

Related words

• putrid
• putrefaction
• putrefact
• pus

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster Unabridged records putrify as a less common spelling.^[3]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 f g h 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins