reciprocity

Etymology

It is borrowed from French réciprocité,^[2][3][4][5] from réciproque (“reciprocal”),^[2][3][4] from Latin reciprocus (“moving backwards and forwards, alternating”).^[3][2][6] The OED, revised in 2009, instead analyses it as the Latin adjective with the suffix -ity, perhaps modelled on the French word, which it dates to 1729;^[7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Dictionary.com also form it from the Latin adjective and -ity.^[8][9] The OED notes that French dictionaries derive réciprocité from Medieval Latin reciprocitas, which is rare, recorded in a British source of the 13th century and on the Continent from the 16th.^[7] Klein explains reciprocus as a compound of *recos (“turning backward”), from re- (“back”), and *procos (“turning forward”), related to pro (“forward”).^[10][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The quality or state of being reciprocal; mutual action: 1753, in a letter of the Duke of Newcastle.^[7][8] Etymonline dates the word to 1766,^[2] and Dictionary.com to 1760–1770.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From the general sense of mutual action, the word soon took on a political and commercial meaning, the mutual granting of rights and privileges, especially in trade: the OED's first quotation is from a United States treaty of 1778,^[7] and Etymonline dates the sense of equal commercial privileges for the subjects of different governments to 1782.^[2] In translations of Kant (from 1799) it rendered German Reciprocität, the mutual action of coexisting substances.^[7] In mathematics and science it came to mean an inverse or complementary correspondence (1815); the law of reciprocity in number theory follows French loi de réciprocité, used by Legendre in 1798.^[7] In later use the word is also applied to the return of cooperative or altruistic behaviour.^[7]

Timeline

• 1753 – the state of being reciprocal; mutual action.^[7][8]
• 1778 – mutual recognition of rights and privileges, especially in trade.^[7]
• 1799 – in Kantian philosophy, the mutual action of coexisting substances.^[7]
• 1815 – inverse or complementary correspondence.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. The quality or state of being reciprocal; mutual exchange, dependence or influence; give-and-take.^[8][5][7]
2. A mutual exchange of commercial or other privileges between countries, as in lower tariffs granted in return for similar ones.^[5][8][7]
3. The return of cooperative or altruistic behaviour in kind.^[7]
4. (photography) The correspondence between the darkening of an emulsion and both the light intensity and the exposure time.^[7]

Word family

• nonreciprocity

Related words

• reciprocate
• reciprocal

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.