table

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈteɪ.bəl/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English table, in part borrowed from Old French table (“board, panel; writing table; food”) and in part inherited from Old English tabele, earlier tabule,^[2][3][4] both from Latin tabula (“a board, plank; writing tablet; list”),^[2][5][6] a word of uncertain origin,^[2][7][3] related to Umbrian tafle “on the board”.^[2][7] The Old English word came through Germanic *tabal, the source also of Dutch tafel and German Tafel.^[2] The verb is from the noun.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English tabule, a flat board or slab: before 899, in Alfred's translation of Bede,^[3] or before 900 in the OED.^[8] The OED's next sense, a tablet for an inscription, as the stone tablets of the Law, is from about 1050.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Word Origins notes that the table “did not grow legs” until about 1300,^[9] and the piece of furniture is first recorded probably before 1300, in Kyng Alisaunder, which also has the sense “an arrangement of numbers for reference”.^[3] One early meaning was a gaming board, and the plural tables was used for backgammon because the board has two folding halves; this died out by the mid-18th century but survives in turn the tables, from the practice of turning the board round between games.^[9][10] Early writers also used table for “a picture”, after Latin tabula.^[11][8] The verb meant “to enter in a list” about 1450 and “to provide with meals” in 1457–58.^[3][8] In parliament table meant “to lay on the table for discussion”, from 1718,^[8][2] but in American use “to postpone indefinitely”, from 1849^[3] or 1866.^[2] Tablecloth is from 1467.^[3]

Timeline

• before 899 – a board, slab.^[3]
• c. 1050 – a tablet for an inscription.^[8]
• before 1300 – a piece of furniture; a table of figures.^[3]
• c. 1450 – verb, to list.^[3]
• 1467 – tablecloth.^[3]
• 17th century – turn the tables.^[9]
• 1718 – to lay before parliament.^[8]
• 1849 – to postpone, in American use.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A piece of furniture with a flat top on legs.
2. The people seated at a table.
3. Food provided; fare: a good table.
4. An orderly arrangement of data in rows and columns.
5. A flat slab or tablet, as for an inscription.
6. A plateau or tableland.

Verb

1. (British) To present for discussion.
2. (US) To postpone discussion of.
3. To enter in a table; to tabulate.

Word family

• tableless

Related words

• tabulate
• tablet
• tableau
• tabular
• tableland
• tabloid

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d e f g Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker