seditious

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sedicious,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French sedicios, later French séditieux,^[2][3][4] and directly borrowed from Latin sēditiōsus (“full of discord, factious, mutinous”),^[2][3][5][6] from sēditiō (“civil disorder, rebellion, mutiny”), the source of sedition.^[3][4][7] The Latin noun is formed from sēd- (“apart”) and itiō (“act of going”), from eō (“to go”),^[8][4] which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ei- (“to go”).^[8] Dictionary.com also analyses the Middle English adjective as sedicioun with the suffix -ous.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tending to incite rebellion, of bills and speech: about 1435, in a London chronicle, which says that the Tower of London should be provisioned and guarded against sedicious..Billes and Langage.^[2] The OED's first record, of a person, is from 1447, in O. Bokenham's life of Agnes in Lyvys of Seyntys;^[4] Etymonline dates the word to the mid-15th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word described language that stirred up the people, and also people who were guilty of revolt; the Middle English Dictionary also records a sense "slanderous", and "riotous, unruly" in its first quotation for people.^[2] The OED notes that its early use was close to "factious, turbulent", the words of Johnson (1755), who quoted Shakespeare, Clarendon and Milton's "seditious angel".^[4][10] From 1535, in the Coverdale Bible, the adjective was also used for seditious persons as a group.^[4] Modern dictionaries define it by the noun sedition,^[11][12] and seditious libel is a term for maligning the sovereign or advocating the violent overthrow of the government.^[5] The noun seditiousness lasted from the late 16th to the mid-18th century, according to the Shorter Oxford.^[5] Etymonline records the noun seditionary from about 1600.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1435 – of bills and language, tending to incite rebellion, sedicious.^[2] The OED first records this sense in 1455.^[4]
• 1447 – of people, given to or guilty of sedition.^[4]
• 1535 – used as a noun for seditious people.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Tending to stir up sedition, or of the nature of sedition: He was jailed for printing seditious leaflets.^[11][12][4]
2. Of a person or group, inclined to take part in sedition or guilty of it; turbulent or factious.^[11][12][4]

Word family

• seditiously
• seditiousness
• nonseditious
• unseditious

Related words

• sedition
• exit
• transit

References

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