resuscitation

Etymology

It is partly borrowed from Anglo-Norman resuscitacion and Middle French resuscitation, recorded in Old French from about 1200, and partly borrowed from Late Latin resuscitātiō (“resurrection from death; renewal”).^[2][3][4] The Latin noun is formed on the past-participle stem of resuscitō (“to rouse again, revive”),^[2][3][5][6] from re- (“again”) and suscitō (“to raise, stir up”), itself from sub- (“up from under”) and citō (“to move violently; to summon”), a frequentative of cieō (“to set in motion”).^[7][3] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from 1308–09, of a miraculous restoration to life and of Christ's resurrection.^[8] The OED compares Catalan ressuscitació, Spanish resucitación, Portuguese ressuscitação and Italian resuscitazione, recorded from the 14th to the 16th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The raising of a dead person to life: before 1450, in a Middle English translation of the Rosarium Theologie, which speaks of "þe resuscitacion or þe reysyng of hym þat was foure dayes dede".^[4][2] Etymonline dates the word to the early 15th century,^[3] while the 1989 edition of the OED had dated it only to 1526.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word was used figuratively as well, of the revival of grace;^[4] from about 1425 it also meant the renewal or restoration of anything.^[2] Paracelsian chemistry used it from 1650 for restoring a burnt or altered substance to its original state.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the act of stirring up anew; the act of reviving, or state of being revived", quoting a letter of Pope's in which it means recovery from illness,^[10][2] a sense the OED now calls rare.^[2] The modern medical sense began with the efforts to revive the nearly drowned: the OED's first quotation, from 1782, is from an address on preserving the lives of people who seemed to have drowned, and the word later came to cover any emergency treatment to revive someone, such as artificial respiration or heart massage.^[2][11][6]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – the raising of a dead person to life, also figuratively.^[2][4]
• before 1500 – revival or renewal of something.^[2]
• 1650 – in chemistry, the restoring of a substance to its original state.^[2]
• 1721 – recovery of health (now rare).^[2]
• 1782 – treatment to revive a person who has nearly drowned, later any emergency treatment to revive someone.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The reviving of a person who is unconscious or apparently dead, especially by emergency treatment such as artificial respiration or heart massage: The lifeguard began resuscitation at once.^[11][2][6]
2. Revival or renewal of something: the resuscitation of an old festival.^[11][2][6]
3. The raising of a dead person to life; resurrection.^[2][4]

Word family

• nonresuscitation
• cardiopulmonary resuscitation
• mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

Related words

• resuscitate
• cite
• excite
• incite
• suscitate

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
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. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd 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. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster