sterile

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sterile,^[2] borrowed from Old French stérile (“not producing fruit”)^[3][2][4][5] and directly borrowed from Latin sterilis (“barren, unproductive, unfruitful”);^[3][6][2][5] Barnhart calls the French word Middle French,^[6] and the OED derives the English word from Latin alone.^[7] The Latin adjective is cognate with Ancient Greek στεῖρα (steîra, “barren cow; barren woman”) and στέριφος (stériphos, “barren, hard”),^[7][5][8] Gothic 𐍃𐍄𐌰𐌹𐍂𐍉 (stairō, “barren (of a woman)”)^[7][5][8] and Old Norse stirtla (“barren cow”),^[6][8] and with a Sanskrit word for a barren cow and an Armenian word for infertile.^[3][7][6] All of them go back to Proto-Indo-European *ster- (“barren, sterile”),^[6][8][9][3] which Klein takes to be originally the same as the root meaning "stiff, rigid", the source of stare, and which Etymonline says is perhaps ultimately that root.^[8][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a tree: producing no fruit, barren, about 1450.^[2][6][3] The OED's first record is from 1552, in Huloet's English–Latin dictionary.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From trees the word spread to people, at first chiefly to women unable to bear children, by the 1530s according to Etymonline, from 1558 in the OED,^[3][7] and to land and soil producing no vegetation (1572).^[7][3] Shakespeare used it once, in Julius Caesar, for "causing barrenness", a sense that did not last.^[7][5] In the 1640s it became figurative, for a mind or writing barren of ideas, and then for anything that leads to no result.^[7][6][3] Biology applied it to organs (1646) and later to cells (1856) unable to reproduce.^[7] The sense "free from microorganisms" was first recorded in 1877, in Tyndall,^[7][6][3] at the time when sterilize gained its medical sense in the late 19th century.^[10][6] A later American use is for something screened by security forces, such as a telephone line that is not tapped, from 1973.^[11][5]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – of a tree, producing no fruit.^[2][6]
• 1552 – first record in the OED, in Huloet's dictionary.^[7]
• 1558 – of a person or animal, producing no offspring.^[7][11]
• 1572 – of soil or a country, producing no vegetation.^[7][3]
• 1626 – of a plant, not bearing fruit, in Bacon.^[7]
• 1642 – mentally or spiritually barren; fruitless.^[7][6]
• 1646 – of an organ, unable to produce reproductive cells.^[7]
• 1877 – free from microorganisms.^[7][6][3]
• 1973 – screened by security forces; of a telephone line, not tapped.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Unable to produce offspring; infertile.^[12][13][7]
2. Free from living microorganisms, especially those that cause disease; aseptic: Use a sterile dressing on the cut.^[12][13][7]
3. Of a plant or a part of one: not bearing fruit, seeds or spores.^[12][13][7]
4. Of land: producing few or no plants or crops; barren.^[13][7][5]
5. Lacking new ideas, life or imagination; also, producing no results, fruitless: a sterile argument over procedure.^[12][7][5]
6. (originally US) Screened or cleared by security forces; of a telephone line, not tapped.^[5][11]
7. (economics, US) Of gold: not used to back credit or to increase the money supply.^[12]
8. (obsolete) Causing sterility.^[7][5]

Word family

• sterilely
• sterility
• semisterile
• sterilant
• self-sterile

Related words

• sterilization
• sterilize
• stare

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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 k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
12. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster