segregate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin sēgregātus (“set apart”), the past participle of sēgregō (“to separate from the flock; to set apart, isolate, divide”).^[2][3][4][5] The OED and the Shorter Oxford derive the verb from the participial stem sēgregāt-.^[2][6] The Latin verb is formed from sē- (“apart”) and grex (“flock, herd”).^[7][8][6] Barnhart and Etymonline start from a phrase with the ablative grege,^[3][4] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged traces the prefix to sed (“without”).^[9] The noun is from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to gather”).^[7][4] The same noun is also the source of aggregate, congregation, egregious and gregarious.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Separated, set apart, as an adjective: 1426, in Lydgate's translation of Guileville's Pilgrimage,^[2] and 1400–50 in Dictionary.com.^[10] The verb, to separate a person or a body of people from the rest, is first recorded in 1542, in T. Becon's Newes out of Heauen.^[2][3][9]

Semantic evolution

Ayto sums up the word's underlying idea as removal from a flock.^[8] Etymonline notes that the verb at first often referred to separating the flock of the godly from sinners, and only later to scientific classification.^[4] From 1579 it was used of things as well as people, especially in chemistry and geology of substances separating out.^[2][6] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as setting apart and separating from others.^[11] The intransitive use, of something parting from a main mass and collecting elsewhere, dates from 1863, in Bates's account of the Amazons,^[2][4] and in genetics the verb has meant to undergo segregation since 1904.^[2] The sense now most familiar, enforcing racial separation, is dated by 1898 in Etymonline and to 1908 in the OED, in Baker's Following Colour Line.^[4][2] The older adjective is now rare, but in zoology and botany it has meant separate from the parent or from one another since 1793.^[2][6] The noun began as a botanist's term in 1871, for a species marked off within a larger group,^[2][9] and also became a term of mathematics in 1878 and of metallurgy in the early 20th century.^[2][6]

Timeline

• 1426 – adjective, set apart, isolated.^[2]
• 1542 – verb, to separate people from the general body.^[2][3][9]
• 1579 – to separate a thing from others.^[2]
• 1793 – adjective, in zoology and botany, separate from the parent or from one another.^[2]
• 1863 – intransitive, to part from a main body and collect in one place.^[2][4]
• 1871 – noun, in botany, a species separated out of a larger group.^[2][9]
• 1878 – noun, in mathematics, one of a smallest group of products of covariants.^[2]
• 1898 – to force racial separation.^[4] The OED's first record is from 1908.^[2]
• 1904 – in genetics, to undergo segregation.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To keep people or things separate from the rest of a group; to isolate: The guards segregated the sick prisoners from the others.^[12][9][2]
2. To impose segregation on a racial or minority group, or to enforce it in a community or institution.^[12][2][6]
3. To separate from a main body or mass and collect together.^[2][6][12]
4. (genetics) To undergo segregation.^[12][2]
5. (metallurgy) To undergo or cause segregation, as a constituent of an alloy.^[12][6]

Noun

1. (genetics) An individual or class differing genetically from the parental line because of the segregation of genes.^[9]
2. (botany) A taxonomic unit split off from another of the same rank.^[9][6][2]
3. (metallurgy) A constituent that separates out as an alloy cools and solidifies.^[6]
4. A group, class or category.^[6]

Adjective

1. (rare) Set apart; isolated.^[2][6][9]
2. (biology) Separate from the parent or from one another; not aggregated.^[2][6]

Word family

• segregative
• segregator
• desegregate
• resegregate

Related words

• segregation
• aggregate
• congregation
• egregious
• gregarious

References

1. ^ 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 s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins