turbulent

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English turbulent,^[2] borrowed from Old French turbulent and directly borrowed from Latin turbulentus (“full of commotion, restless”),^[2][3][4][5] from turba (“turmoil, crowd”),^[4][5][6][7] which is also the source of turbō (“to disturb, agitate”);^[8][9][10] the suffix is -ulentus, as in corpulent and truculent.^[6][11][8] The OED, which first finds the word in 1538, treats it as a borrowing from Latin, with the French word recorded from the 12th–13th century.^[8] The Latin adjective also meant figuratively "troubled, confused".^[4] It is related to turbid.^[5][3][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a liquid, cloudy or impure: before 1425, in the Middle English Chauliac, which forbids "water turbulent" to patients.^[2][4] Barnhart dates the word probably before 1425 in the sense "unruly, violent".^[3][13]

Semantic evolution

Of people, "disorderly, unruly, riotous", it is recorded from the mid-15th century,^[2][4] and the OED's first record, in Coverdale's dedication of his Bible (1538), has this sense.^[8] From the 1570s it was used of weather and the sea, "stormy",^[8][4] and since 1609 of states of mind and of political affairs.^[8] Johnson (1755) gave first "raising agitation" and then "exposed to commotion".^[14] In 1895 Horace Lamb's Hydrodynamics used it of a fluid whose speed at each point changes irregularly with constant mixing, as opposed to a steady flow,^[8] the sense of turbulent flow in physics.^[8][6]

Timeline

• before 1425 – of liquids, cloudy, impure.^[2][4]
• before 1460 – of a person, unruly, riotous.^[2]
• 1538 – of people, causing disturbance, unruly (first record in the OED).^[8]
• 1573 – of weather or the sea, stormy.^[8]
• 1609 – of the mind or of public affairs, troubled.^[8]
• 1625 – of things, causing trouble (obsolete by 1671).^[8]
• 1895 – of the flow of a fluid, irregular.^[8]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Full of conflict, disorder or rapid change: a turbulent decade in the country's history.^[6][8]
2. Inclined to disorder or rebellion; unruly or causing unrest: a turbulent crowd.^[6][15][8]
3. Of air, water or weather, moving violently and irregularly; stormy: The plane hit turbulent air over the mountains.^[6][15][8]
4. In physics, of a fluid flow, in which the velocity at each point changes irregularly; showing turbulence.^[8][6][15]

Word family

• turbulently
• unturbulent
• turbulent flow

Related words

• disturb
• perturb
• trouble
• turbid
• turbine
• turbulence

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins