tort

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English tort (“wrong, injury”),^[2][3] borrowed from Old French tort (“wrong, injustice”),^[4][5][3][6] and directly borrowed from Medieval Latin tortum (“injustice, a wrong”),^[5][2] the noun use of the neuter of Latin tortus (“twisted, wrung”), the past participle of torqueō (“to turn, twist, wring”),^[4][5][6][7] from Proto-Indo-European *terkw- (“to twist”).^[5][3] The OED cites the phrase tortum facere in a capitulary of Charles the Bald of 864, and compares tuerto and torto.^[4][7] The Anglo-Norman word, recorded from the early 12th century, meant twisted or crooked and also wrong, wicked or unlawful.^[8] Weekley compares the relationship of wrong to wring.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Injury, wrong: about 1250, in The Owl and the Nightingale, according to Barnhart;^[6] Etymonline dates it to the mid-13th century.^[5] The Middle English Dictionary's first quotation, from before 1325, has the legal pair tort and force.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The general sense "wrong, injury, harm" was rare in English before the 16th century and died out in the 18th;^[10][4][11] Spenser still used it in The Faerie Queene, and Johnson (1755) called it obsolete.^[12] The legal sense, the breach of a duty imposed by law that gives the injured person a right to sue for damages, is recorded from 1586.^[4][13][5] It came to be distinguished from breach of contract: Black's defines a tort as a civil wrong other than a breach of contract, and in the plural as the branch of law dealing with such wrongs.^[14][15] Middle English also had an adjective tort, twisted, from the same Latin participle.^[5][11]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – injury, wrong (obsolete by the 18th century).^[6][5]
• before 1325 – in the legal phrase tort and force.^[2]
• 1586 – in law, a breach of a duty that gives a right of action for damages.^[4][13]
• 1632 – physical injury, torment; a false statement (both rare and obsolete).^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (law) A wrongful act or failure to act, other than a breach of contract, for which the injured person can bring a civil action for damages: The court held that the factory's pollution was a tort against its neighbours.^[16][15][14]
2. (law) torts: the branch of law dealing with such wrongs.^[14]
3. (obsolete) Injury or wrong done to someone.^[15][4][12]

Related words

• tortfeasor
• tortious
• torture
• torment
• torque
• distort
• tortoise

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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)
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ 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.
13. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
14. ^ a b c Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West
15. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
16. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins