seduce

Etymology

It is partly borrowed from Middle French séduire, whose stem séduis- gave the earliest English form, seduisen, used by Caxton in 1477,^[2][3][4][5] and partly borrowed from Latin sēdūcō (“to lead aside or away; to lead astray”), to which the English word was later assimilated.^[2][4][3][6] The French verb was an alteration of Old French suduire (“to corrupt, seduce”),^[3][7][5] from Latin subdūcō (“to draw away, withdraw”),^[3][7] influenced in form by Medieval Latin sēdūcere.^[7][3] In French it meant to cause a person to sin from the early 12th century, to mislead from the late 14th, to lead a woman into sex outside marriage from the early 15th, and to charm from the end of the 17th.^[2] The Latin verb is formed from sē- (“aside, away”) and dūcō (“to lead”),^[5][8][9][7] from Proto-Indo-European *deuk- (“to lead”).^[5][7] It meant to entice in a legal text of the 2nd century AD, and the Vulgate used it of leading a woman into sex,^[2] although Etymonline thinks the sexual sense was apparently not Latin.^[5] The other Romance languages have Catalan seduir (1460), Spanish seducir, Portuguese seduzir and Italian sedurre.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To persuade someone to break a bond of loyalty or service to a master or authority: 1477, in Caxton's translation of Le Fèvre's History of Jason.^[2][4][3] Etymonline dates the word, in this sense, to the 1520s,^[5] and Barnhart dates the Latin-based form to 1526, "to lead astray, tempt".^[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense "to lead astray in conduct or belief" followed before 1492, again in Caxton; from 1526 it was also used of things such as money, power or fame that draw a person into wrong.^[2][3] The sexual sense, of a man inducing a woman to have sex outside marriage, is first recorded before 1538 in Scotland;^[2] Etymonline dates it to the 1550s and Barnhart to about 1560.^[5][3] It later widened to persuading anyone into sex, especially for the first time,^[2] and Etymonline calls it now the prevailing sense.^[5] From 1635 the verb also meant to lure someone away from a place or course; from 1747, in Chesterfield, it also meant to win over or charm.^[2] Johnson (1755) gave only the moral senses: to draw aside from the right, to tempt, corrupt, mislead and deceive, quoting Julius Caesar.^[10] Weekley remarked that the general sense survives in seductive and the chief current one in seduction.^[11]

Timeline

• 1477 – to persuade someone to desert allegiance or service.^[2][4]
• before 1492 – to lead astray in conduct or belief.^[2]
• 1526 – of money, power or fame: to lead astray.^[2][3]
• before 1538 – to induce a woman to have sex outside marriage.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the 1550s and Barnhart to about 1560.^[5][3]
• 1635 – to lure someone away from a course or place.^[2]
• 1747 – to charm or win over.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To persuade someone to have sexual intercourse.^[12][13][14]
2. To lead astray; to persuade to do something wrong or unwise: Easy profits seduced the clerk into fraud.^[12][14][13]
3. To attract, win over or lure: The quiet of the hills seduced them into staying.^[12][13][2]
4. To persuade someone to disloyalty or desertion, as a soldier from his duty.^[13][2][8]

Word family

• seduceable
• seducer
• seducible
• seducingly
• unseduced

Related words

• seduction
• seductive
• seducement
• seductress
• duct
• duke
• conduct
• subduce

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 r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new 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. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
14. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press