udder

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English udder,^[2] inherited from Old English ūder,^[2][3][4][5] from Proto-West Germanic *ūdr-,^[6] and Wiktionary gives the Proto-Germanic form as *ūdarą.^[1] The word is cognate with Old Frisian ūder, Old Saxon ūder, Middle Dutch ūder, Dutch uier, Old High German ūtar and German Euter,^[5][7] and, with a change of consonant that nobody has explained, with Old Norse júgr.^[8][9][7] Outside Germanic it is cognate with Latin ūber, the source of exuberant, and with Ancient Greek οὖθαρ (oûthar) and the Sanskrit word for an udder.^[10][8][11] The dictionaries reconstruct the Indo-European form in various ways: Proto-Indo-European *ūdhr- in Ayto and Hoad,^[10][6] *eue-dh-r in Etymonline.^[9] Beekes explains the family as an old r/n-stem, with the r-stem generalized in Latin and Germanic.^[12] The OED doubts whether the Old Frisian form iāder and its relatives are a variant of the same stem or a different stem altogether.^[8] The long vowel of the Old English word was regularly shortened before the consonant group in the middle of the word,^[8] probably first in oblique cases such as the genitive, as in fodder and ladder.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The milk-producing organ of an animal, also a breast: the Old English word is recorded only once,^[8] in the Kentish Glosses, as of údrum for Latin uberibus.^[13][8] Barnhart and Dictionary.com date it to before 1000,^[7][14] and Merriam-Webster to before the 12th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has stayed close to the original, and the changes are mostly in what the word was applied to.^[8] From 1474 it could mean the organ as an article of food,^[8] and the Middle English Dictionary has a food use too.^[2] From 1582 poets occasionally used the plural for the teats themselves,^[8][5] while from the early 18th century it was rarely used of a woman's breasts.^[8][5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the breast or dugs of a cow, or other large animal", quoting Shakespeare's lioness "with udders all drawn dry".^[15] In Scotland and Somerset it formed farming terms such as udder-clap, a tumour in a ewe's udder, udder-ill, an ailment of cows, and udder-locks, the wool plucked from a ewe's udder.^[16]

Timeline

• before 1000 – Old English úder, an udder or breast, in the Kentish Glosses.^[8][13][7]
• before 1398 – the spelling udder, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus.^[2][7]
• 1474 – the organ as food.^[8]
• 1582 – in the plural, a dug or teat, in Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil.^[8]
• 1702 – a woman's breast.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The large, baggy mammary organ of cows, goats, sheep and similar animals, with two or more teats: The farmer wiped the goat's udder before milking.^[17][3][8]
2. This organ used as food.^[8][2]
3. (rare) In poetry, in the plural, a dug or teat.^[8][5]
4. (rare) A woman's breast.^[8][5]

Word family

• uddered
• udderful
• udderless

Related words

• exuberant
• uberous
• uberty

Usage notes

Wright's dialect dictionary lists a separate udder from Yorkshire, a heap of rubbish, with a cross-reference to howder, and udder-mucking, untidy or slovenly, from Warwickshire.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
14. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
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. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
17. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins