tumid

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin tumidus (“swollen, swelling”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} formed with the suffix -idus^[8][9] from tumeō (“to swell”),^[2][3][4][8] from Proto-Indo-European *teuə- (“to swell”).^[4][3] The Latin verb is related to tumor (“swelling”) and tumulus (“a mound”),^[8] and Klein connects the same root with thumb, thigh and thousand.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Morbidly swollen, of a part of the body: 1541, in R. Copland's translation of Galen's fourth book of Terapeutyke.^[5][2][7]

Semantic evolution

The English word began as a medical term.^[2][3] From 1626, in G. Sandys's Ovid, it also described anything of a swollen or bulging form,^[2] and Milton's "tumid hills" is the quotation that Johnson (1755) gives for "protuberant".^[10][7] In later use this sense belongs chiefly to natural history.^[2] Latin tumidus already meant "swollen with anger or pride".^[3] From 1648, in R. Boyle's Seraphic Love, the English adjective was used of inflated language and style.^[2][3] Johnson's third sense is "pompous; boastful; puffy; falsely sublime".^[10]

Timeline

• 1541 – morbidly swollen, of a part of the body.^[5][7][2]
• 1626 – of a swollen or bulging form.^[2]
• 1648 – figuratively, of language or style, inflated, bombastic.^[2][3]
• 1840 – “big”, pregnant, teeming (rare), in De Quincey.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a part of the body: swollen or enlarged: a tumid, infected foot.^[11][7][2]
2. Bulging or protuberant in form, chiefly in natural history.^[11][7][2]
3. Of language or style: pompous, inflated, bombastic: tumid after-dinner oratory.^[11][7][2]
4. (rare) Pregnant, teeming.^[2][12]

Word family

• tumidity
• tumidly
• tumidness

Related words

• tumescent
• tumor
• tumult
• tumulus
• thumb
• thigh
• thousand

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 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 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ 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.
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press