tendon

Pronunciation

• /ˈtɛn.dən/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Medieval Latin tendō,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} though the Shorter Oxford and Hoad allow that it came through French tendon, recorded in the 16th century.^[7][8][2] The medieval Latin word is an alteration, under the influence of the Latin verb meaning "to stretch", the source of tend, of Late Latin tenōn,^[3][4][6][2] from Ancient Greek τένων (ténōn, “sinew, tendon”),^[3][4][2] which comes from the stem of τείνω (teínō, “to stretch”).^[4][7][8][9] Etymonline traces it to Proto-Indo-European *ten- (“to stretch”).^[3] According to the OED, Celsus (about AD 50) still treated the word as Greek.^[2] Caelius Aurelianus (about 400–420) kept its Greek inflections, while Theodorus Priscianus gave it a Latin one.^[2] In medieval Latin it took the forms tendon and tendo, with the plural tendones and, in the 16th century, tendines.^[2] An earlier English form was tenoun, from the unaltered Latin word, recorded from the late 14th century.^[3][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A band of tough fibrous tissue that ends a muscle and attaches it to a bone; a sinew: 1543, in Bartholomew Traheron's translation of Giovanni da Vigo's surgery.^[2][4] Merriam-Webster dates the word to 1541 and Etymonline to the 1540s.^[5][3] The older form tenoun appears in an English Chauliac before 1425.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defined it as "a sinew; a ligature by which the joints are moved", quoting Wiseman's surgery.^[12] It was used in entomology from 1826, in Kirby and Spence,^[2] and in engineering, from 1958, for a steel rod or wire stretched in wet concrete to prestress it as it sets.^[2] The Latin name tendo Achillis, the Achilles tendon, was first used by the German surgeon Heister; the older chorda Achillis was coined in 1693 by the Flemish anatomist Philip Verheyen when he dissected his own amputated leg.^[9]

Timeline

• late 14th century – the earlier form tenoun.^[3][10]
• 1541 – a sinew joining a muscle to a bone.^[5][2] The OED's first quotation is from 1543.^[2][4]
• 1826 – entomology.^[2]
• 1958 – engineering: a steel rod or wire that prestresses concrete.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tough cord or band of fibrous connective tissue that joins a muscle to a bone or another part; a sinew.^[13][5][2]
2. In engineering, a steel rod or cable stretched in concrete to prestress it.^[2]

Word family

• tendonitis
• tendon of Achilles

Related words

• tend
• tenon

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c 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)
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins