strigil

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin strigilis (“scraper, horse-comb”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from the base of stringō (“to touch lightly, graze; to strip off”),^{[3][4][7][8][2][9]} though Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com call the two only akin.^[10][11] Etymonline traces the verb to Proto-Indo-European *strig- (“to stroke, rub, press”), with striga (“stroke, furrow”), perhaps stria (“furrow, channel”), Old English stracian (“to stroke”) and German streichen (“to stroke, rub”), and quotes de Vaan's view that this merged in Latin with *strengh- (“to tie”), the source of strain.^[2] A cognate in Vulgar Latin *strigula (“curry-comb”) gave Italian stregghia, Old French estrille and French étrille, and passed into Old High German strigil, now German Striegel.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

An instrument with a curved blade for scraping sweat and dirt from the skin: 1581, in Mulcaster's Positions,^[3][10] which Etymonline gives as the 1580s and Dictionary.com as 1575–85.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

The English word was taken from Latin as a term for an ancient object, made of metal, ivory or horn and used by Greeks and Romans at the bath or after exercise.^[3][2][10] In the north of England a wooden or iron tool for removing sweat from horses went by the same name, a use Wright marks as obsolete.^[12] From 1873 entomologists used the word for a comblike structure with which many insects clean their antennae,^[3][10][8] and in architecture it became a name for curved or S-shaped flutings.^[10][9]

Timeline

• 1581 – an ancient instrument for scraping the skin.^[3][10]
• 1873 – in entomology, a comblike structure on an insect's leg.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A curved blade used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to scrape the skin after exercise or at the bath.^[9][10][3]
2. (entomology) A comblike structure at the end of the front tibia of many insects, used to clean the antennae and other parts.^[10][4][3]
3. (architecture) One of a set of curved or S-shaped flutings carved on a flat surface, as in Roman work.^[10][9]

Related words

• stricture
• strain
• stria
• strike
• streak

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ 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)