scabies

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin scabiēs (“roughness, mange, itch”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from scabō (“to scratch, scrape”).^[2][5][4][7] The American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com treat it as a Middle English word.^[5][8] Etymonline derives the Latin verb from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kep- (“to cut, scrape, hack”), the source too of Old English sceafan (“to scrape, shave”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌽 (skaban), Ancient Greek σκάπτω (skáptō, “to dig”), Lithuanian skabus (“sharp”) and Latvian skabrs (“splintery, sharp”),^[4] and the OED calls the link with the Old English verb, which gave shave, probable.^[2] Scab and shabby are from Germanic relatives of the Latin verb.^[4][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A general name for skin diseases with a scabby or scaly eruption: about 1400, in a Middle English translation of Lanfranc's surgery, Lanfranc's Cirurgie.^[2][3] Dictionary.com dates the word 1350–1400,^[8] and Collins to the 15th century.^[10]

Semantic evolution

At first the word covered skin eruptions of many kinds, and the OED's last record of this wide sense is from 1742.^[2][7] The narrow modern sense, a contagious disease caused by a parasite, dates from the early 19th century:^[11] the OED first has it in 1813, in T. Bateman's Practical Synopsis of Cutaneous Diseases,^[2] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Etymonline in 1814.^[6][4] According to Etymonline, the older English name for a skin condition of this kind was simply scab.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – a general term for scabby or scaly skin diseases (obsolete by 1742).^[2]
• 1813 – a contagious skin disease caused by a parasite, the itch.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Etymonline date it to 1814.^[6][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A contagious skin disease caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei, with intense itching and small inflamed spots; also mange caused by mites.^[10][6][7]
2. (obsolete, c. 1400–1742) Any of various skin diseases with a scabby or scaly eruption.^[2][7]

Word family

• scabietic
• scabicide

Related words

• scab
• scabrous
• scabious
• shave
• shabby

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press