scathe

Etymology

The verb is inherited from Middle English scathen, also skathen,^[2][3] borrowed from Old Norse skaða (“to hurt, harm, damage”),^{[4][5][6][3][7][8]} from Proto-Germanic *skaþōną.^[1][9] Barnhart calls the source only Scandinavian, comparing Danish skade and Swedish skada.^[10] The verb is cognate with Old English sceaðian (“to injure, rob”), Old Frisian skathia, Dutch schaden and Old High German skadōn.^[4][5] The noun is inherited from Middle English scathe, also skaþe,^[11] borrowed from Old Norse skaði (“harm, damage”),^{[4][3][11][12][13]} from Proto-Germanic *skaþô,^[1][14] and has the cognates Old English sceaða (“malefactor; rarely, injury”) and Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌸𐌹𐍃 (skaþis, “harm”).^[4][11][14] The Gersum Project treats the noun as Norse because its initial /sk/ shows no palatalization, and finds it fairly widely through Middle English and later dialect, especially in northern and eastern texts and alliterative verse.^[11] The OED counts the noun as partly inherited too: Laȝamon's scaðe, a malefactor, almost certainly began with /ʃ/ and continues the Old English word, whose regular modern form would begin with ⟨sh⟩, while some Middle English spellings with ⟨sch⟩ may be native as well, although in most verse examples they alliterate with ⟨sk⟩.^[4] Old Norse also had skeðja, the counterpart of Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌸𐌾𐌰𐌽 (skaþjan, “to harm”), but the OED finds no evidence that it, or the corresponding Old English strong verb, reached Middle English.^[4][15] Outside Germanic, older dictionaries compare Ancient Greek ἀσκηθής (askēthḗs, “unharmed”),^[4][10][13] and Kroonen sets up a European root Proto-Indo-European *skeh₁tH- with this word and Old Irish scíth (“weary, tired”),^[15] but Etymonline reports that Beekes finds the Greek comparison impossible on phonetic grounds and that Boutkan limits the word to Celtic and Germanic.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To injure or harm: about 1175, in the Ormulum: Forr ȝiff þu skaþesst aniȝ mann Þu skaþesst firrst te sellfenn.^[2][4] Etymonline says late 12th century^[5] and Barnhart probably about 1200.^[10] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates both the noun and the verb to the 13th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The Middle English verb covered harming a person, making war on someone and defeating them;^[2] from about 1485 to 1602 it also meant to cause someone financial loss.^[4] The noun meant harm or damage, also, from about 1300, a matter for regret, as in it is scathe, it is a pity.^[4][3] Harm and hurt later replaced the word in general use.^[16] Etymonline and Barnhart trace the sense "to scar, scorch" to Milton's Paradise Lost (1667),^[5][10][16] while the OED's first quotation for "to blast, sear" is W. Scott's The Lady of the Lake (1810), and it labels the sense poetic and rhetorical.^[4] From that sense came "to wither with invective or satire", dated 1852 by Etymonline and Barnhart^[5][10] and 1857 by the OED,^[4] mainly in scathing, which is recorded in its literal sense from 1794.^[4][5] The harm sense now survives mostly in the negative unscathed,^[8][5] dated to the late 14th century by Etymonline^[5] and 1425 by the OED,^[4] and before the 19th century found mainly in Scottish documents.^[5] The noun lived on in Scots, Irish and northern English dialect, in spellings such as skaith, and for injury, loss, danger or expense.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1175 – to injure, hurt, damage.^[4][2]
• c. 1275 – noun, in to do scathe, to do harm.^[4]
• c. 1300 – a matter for regret, in it is scathe, it is a pity.^[4]
• c. 1485 – to subject to financial loss (obsolete by 1602); noun, a loss for which compensation is claimed, chiefly Scots (obsolete by 1678).^[4]
• 1667 – to scar, scorch, in Milton.^[5][10] The OED's first quotation for this sense is from 1810.^[4]
• 1852 – to sear with invective or satire.^[5][10] The OED first quotes the verb in this sense in 1857.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (archaic) To harm or injure: The raiders scathed every village along the coast.^[4][3][18]
2. To scorch or sear, as with fire or lightning.^[4][3][7]
3. (rare) To attack with severe criticism or invective.^[18][3][4]

Noun

1. (archaic) Harm, injury or damage.^[18][3][4]
2. In dialect, something to regret; a pity or misfortune.^[3][4]
3. (obsolete, Old English–1275) A person who does harm; a malefactor.^[4][7]

Word family

• scatheless
• scathelessly
• scathing
• unscathed
• scatheful

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 i j 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 q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b c d Dance, Richard; Pons-Sanz, Sara; Schorn, Brittany, eds., The Gersum Project: The Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary, gersum.org
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
14. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
15. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
16. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
17. ^ 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)
18. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins