testicle

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English testicule,^[2][3][4][5] borrowed from Latin testiculus (“testicle”),^{[6][7][8][3][4][5]} a diminutive of testis (“testicle”).^{[6][7][9][3][5]} The present spelling, with -cle, is a 15th-century alteration of testicule;^[4][5] Skeat gave the route through French testicule.^[10] The Latin word for the organ is usually taken as a special use of testis in the sense of a witness, the witness to a man's virility,^{[5][8][11][12][13]} a view that links it with testify and testament.^[12][5] The OED calls its origin uncertain: Walde rejected the identity with the word for a witness and proposed a connection with testa (“pot, shell”), although the OED observes that Middle French tesmoing (“witness”) had this meaning in the 16th century.^[6] Etymonline dismisses stories of a swearing-in ceremony as groundless modern inventions,^[5] and compares Ancient Greek παραστάται (parastátai, “testicles, literally bystanders”)^[5][11] and French slang témoins (“witnesses”).^[5] Buck, however, took the Greek word to mean supporting props rather than legal supporters.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The male sex gland: testicule, 1392, according to Barnhart,^[4][14] and in the late 14th century in Etymonline.^[5] The form testicle appears in early-15th-century medical writing: about 1425 in a translation of Arderne's Treatises of Fistula,^[6] and probably before 1425 in a translation of Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The anatomical sense has hardly changed.^[6][7] Old English had used its own words, beallucas, the ancestor of ballocks, and herþan, probably at first "leather bag".^[5] From 1560 to 1692 testicle could also mean a woman's ovary, as in the Byrth of Mankynde,^[6] a sense the Shorter Oxford takes back to late Middle English,^[7] and in 1597 Gerard's Herball used the plural as an old name for an orchid, after the shape of its tubers.^[6] From 1712 it was occasionally applied to the corresponding organ in animals other than mammals.^[6][7] Johnson (1755) glossed it simply as "stone", quoting Browne on the old belief that a beaver bites off its testicles to escape the hunter.^[15] Etymonline notes that slang terms for the testicles in other languages are most commonly words for balls, stones, nuts or eggs.^[5]

Timeline

• 1392 – testicule, the male sex gland.^[4][14]
• c. 1425 – the spelling testicle.^[6]
• 1560 – the ovary (obsolete by 1692).^[6]
• 1597 – plural, a name for an orchid (obsolete).^[6]
• 1712 – the corresponding organ in non-mammals (rare).^[6][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Either of the two male reproductive glands that produce sperm and testosterone, in most mammals enclosed in a scrotum; a testis.^{[16][6][3][17]}
2. (rare) The corresponding organ in an animal other than a mammal.^[6][7]
3. (obsolete, 1560–1692) The ovary in females.^[6][7]

Word family

• testicular

Related words

• testament
• testify
• testimony
• testis
• attest
• detest
• protest
• intestate

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster