transfix

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin trānsfīxus (“pierced through, impaled”),^[2][3][4][5] the past participle of trānsfīgō (“to pierce through”),^[2][3][6][7] from trāns- (“through”) and fīgō (“to fix, fasten”).^[2][3][6][7] The OED compares Old French transfixer, which Godefroy records in the 15th century,^[6] and Barnhart, Etymonline and Weekley bring the English verb at least partly through that French word.^[2][3][8] The Latin verb is referred to Proto-Indo-European *dheigw- (“to stick, fix”).^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

To pierce through, to impale: 1590, in Spenser's Faerie Queene.^[6][2][4] Etymonline dates the word to the 1580s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The figurative use, recorded from 1649 in Lovelace's Lucasta, began with being pierced through by pain, grief or another feeling,^[6][3] and passed to the sense of being held motionless by amazement, terror or fascination.^[6][2][3] Johnson (1755) gave only "to pierce through", with quotations from Spenser, Milton, Dryden and Fenton, among them Dryden's "Diana's dart / In an unhappy chace transfix'd her heart".^[9] In current British usage Collins puts the motionless sense first.^[10]

Timeline

• 1590 – to pierce through with, or impale on, something sharp; to fasten by piercing.^[6][2][4]
• 1649 – figurative, to pierce with an emotion; to make motionless with astonishment or horror.^[6][2]
• mid 19th century – adverb transfixedly.^[11]
• late 19th century – noun transfixture, the state of being transfixed (rare).^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. To hold someone motionless with horror, awe or fascination: The news from the front left the whole room transfixed.^[10][4][6]
2. To pierce through or impale with something sharp, or to fasten by piercing: An arrow transfixed the stag's shoulder.^[10][4][6]
3. (medicine) To cut through a limb or other organ, as in amputation.^[10]

Word family

• transfixion

Related words

• fix
• affix
• prefix
• suffix
• fichu
• dike

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ 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
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press