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scale

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English has three main words spelled scale: the plate on a fish's skin, the pan of a balance, and a series of steps or degrees.[1][2] The first two share a Germanic root and are related to shell; the third is from Latin scāla “ladder”.[2][3]

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /skeɪl/[4]

scale1 plate

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English scale,[5] borrowed from Old French escale (“cup, shell, pod, husk”),[3][1] from *skala or another Germanic source,[3][1] from Proto-Germanic *skæla, “to split, divide”,[3] the source also of Old High German scala “shell”, Gothic skalja “tile” and Old English scealu “shell, husk”,[3][5] from Proto-Indo-European *skel- (“to cut”).[3] The verb, “to remove scales”, is from the noun.[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A thin hard plate on the skin of a fish or snake: about 1300, in the romance Guy of Warwick,[1] the early 14th century in the OED.[6]

Semantic evolution

Of human skin diseases it is from the late 14th century, and in botany, of the coverings of leaf buds, by 1776.[3] The scales that fall from one's eyes, usually figurative, echo Acts 9:18.[3] The verb meant “to scrape, remove infected parts” before 1425 and “to remove the scales from” in 1440.[1] “To come off in thin layers” is from the 1520s.[3] Scaly is from before 1398.[1]

Timeline

  • c. 1300 – a scale of a fish.[1]
  • late 14th century – of skin diseases.[3]
  • before 1398 – scaly.[1]
  • 1440 – verb, to remove scales.[1]
  • 1520s – to flake off.[3]
  • 1776 – in botany.[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. One of the small hard plates covering the skin of fish, reptiles and some mammals.
  2. A similar part, as on the wings of butterflies or covering a leaf bud.
  3. A flake of dry skin; a crust or deposit, as of limescale or tartar.

Verb

  1. To remove the scales or a coating from.
  2. To come off in thin layers.

Word family

  • scaly
  • scaling
  • descale

scale2 balance

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English scale, scole,[5] borrowed from Old Norse skál (“bowl, drinking cup; in the plural, weighing scales”),[3][1][7] cognate with Old Saxon skāla “cup”, Dutch schaal and German Schale “bowl”.[3][1] It comes from a noun derived from Proto-Germanic *skæla, “to split”, and is related to Old Norse skel “shell”.[3][1] The connecting idea seems to be half of a split shell used as a cup or as a pan for weighing;[3] Paulus Diaconus, however, linked the “cup” sense to a supposed custom of making goblets from skulls.[3] The verb, “to weigh”, is from the noun.[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A drinking cup or bowl: probably before 1200, in the Ancrene Riwle,[1] about 1200 in Etymonline and about 1205 in the OED.[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The “cup” sense probably passed to the pans of a balance (late 14th century),[2][3] and the name was then extended to the whole weighing instrument in the early 15th century.[3] The “cup” sense survives in South African English.[2][6] The Scales, the sign Libra, is from 1631.[6] To turn the scale is from about 1440,[6] and to hold the scales even, “to judge fairly”, from 1648.[6] The verb meant “to weigh” from the 1690s,[3] the 17th century in Hoad.[7] In Yorkshire dialect a scale was formerly a drinking cup.[8]

Timeline

  • before 1200 – a drinking cup.[1]
  • c. 1375 – the pan of a balance.[6]
  • early 15th century – a weighing instrument.[3]
  • 1631 – the sign Libra.[6]
  • 1690s – verb, to weigh.[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. An instrument for weighing, often in the plural: bathroom scales.
  2. Either pan of a balance.

Verb

  1. To weigh, or to have a certain weight.

Word family

  • scales
  • Libra

scale3 series

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin scāla (“ladder, flight of stairs”), usually plural scālae,[3][1] from *scansla, from the stem of scandere (“to climb”),[3][1] the source of scan, from Proto-Indo-European *skand- (“to spring, leap, climb”).[3] The musical sense and the sense “proportion of a map” came through scala.[3] The verb, “to climb with a ladder”, is from the noun.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A series of marks along a line for measuring: 1391, in Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe.[1][3] The verb, “to climb a wall by a ladder”, is from about 1380.[1]

Semantic evolution

Middle English also had scale, “ladder used in sieges”, about 1400.[3] The musical sense, a fixed series of tones, is from the 1590s,[3] 1597 in Barnhart,[1] and the general sense “a series of steps or degrees” from about 1600.[3][1] A standard of measurement or estimation, as in on a large scale, is in Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum (1626),[1] and the proportion of a map to what it shows from 1662.[1] The verb came to mean “to climb” in general before 1425,[1] “to measure by a scale” in 1798,[3] and “to reduce in proportion” in American English in 1790;[1] scale down is by 1887.[3]

Timeline

  • c. 1380 – verb, to climb by ladder.[1]
  • 1391 – a series of marks.[1]
  • 1597 – a musical scale.[1]
  • c. 1600 – a series of steps.[3][1]
  • 1626 – a standard of estimation.[1]
  • 1662 – the scale of a map.[1]
  • 1790 – verb, to reduce in proportion.[1]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A series of marks at regular intervals, used for measuring.
  2. A graded system or series: a pay scale.
  3. The proportion between the size of a map or model and the thing it represents.
  4. Relative size or extent: on a grand scale.
  5. (music) A series of notes rising or falling in pitch by fixed steps.

Verb

  1. To climb up or over.
  2. To make or change in proportion: scale down.

Word family

  • scalable
  • escalate
  • escalator
  • large-scale
  • scaling ladder
  • shell
  • skill
  • scallop
  • shale
  • scan
  • ascend
  • descend

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  2. ^ a b c d Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)