tabulate

Etymology

The verb is borrowed from Late Latin tabulō (“to fit with planks”), through its past participial stem,^[2][3] a verb recorded from the 4th century that in Medieval Latin also meant to prepare tables and to compile books of tables;^[2] in its modern senses it is formed directly from English table + -ate.^[2][4] Etymonline, Barnhart and Merriam-Webster Unabridged describe it as formed from Latin tabula (“board, tablet”) and -ate.^[5][6][7][8] The adjective is from the past participle tabulātus (“boarded, planked”), which in Medieval Latin also meant panelled.^[2][3] The Latin noun is the source of table.^[7][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The adjective, panelled, is found in 1596, in Dalrymple's translation of Leslie's Historie of Scotland.^[2][3] The verb is first Scots, meaning to enter on a roll, before 1646;^[2][4] Blount's Glossographia (1656) gave it the literal sense of laying a floor of boards.^[2][5][6]

Semantic evolution

The modern sense, to arrange facts or figures in a table, is recorded from 1734, in a translation of Barrow on mathematics,^[2][5][6][7] and the Oxford dictionaries derive these modern senses directly from table.^[4][2] Johnson (1755) defined it as "to reduce to tables or synopses", adding in 1773 a sense "to shape with a flat surface",^[9] which survived mainly in the participle tabulated.^[2][3] The adjective came to mean thin and flat (1826) and, in palaeontology, having horizontal plates, of corals (1863).^[2][3] In the typewriter age the verb also meant to set a tabulator stop, a back-formation from tabulator.^[7]

Timeline

• 1596 – adjective, panelled (obsolete).^[2][3]
• before 1646 – Scottish, to enter on a roll (obsolete).^[2][3]
• 1656 – to lay a floor of boards (obsolete).^[2][5][6]
• 1734 – to put into the form of a table.^[2][5][6][7]
• 1826 – adjective, thin and flat, tabular.^[2]
• 1863 – adjective, of corals, having horizontal plates.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To arrange data in a table or columns, or in summary form: The clerk tabulated the votes from each district.^[10][7][2]
2. To give a flat surface to.^[10][2][9]
3. To set a tabulator stop, or move a typewriter carriage to it.^[7]

Adjective

1. Having a flat surface; tabular.^[10][2]
2. Of certain corals, having horizontal skeletal plates.^[10][7][2]

Word family

• tabulation
• tabulator
• tabulable
• pretabulate
• retabulate

Related words

• table
• tabular
• tabula rasa
• tabularize
• tablet

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 s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins