urine

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈjʊəɹɪn/, /ˈjʊəɹaɪn/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English urine, borrowed from Old French urine (a variant of orine),^[2][3][4] and directly borrowed from Latin ūrīna.^[5][3][4] The Latin word is related to Ancient Greek οὖρον (oûron, “urine”),^[2][6][7] and the dictionaries trace both to an Indo-European root for water or rain, Proto-Indo-European *wer-,^[7][8][5] seen in Sanskrit वार् (vār, “water”), Latvian jūra (“sea”), Old Norse úr (“drizzle”) and Old English wær (“sea”).^[7][3][5] Barnhart suggests the Latin noun was formed after ūrīnor (“to plunge into water”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The fluid discharged from the bladder: about 1325, in a political song.^[2] Barnhart dates it probably before 1300.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In medieval medicine urine was a main tool of diagnosis, and the Middle English Dictionary has separate senses for it as a product of digestion and as a sign examined by physicians.^[4][3] The verb, to urinate, appears in Ben Jonson's Volpone (1607),^[2] beside urinate, from the 16th century.^[9]

Timeline

• before 1200 – urinal, a container for urine.^[5]
• c. 1325 – the fluid.^[2]
• 1483 – a urine, a sample, with plural.^[2]
• 16th century – urinary and urinate.^[9]
• 1607 – the verb, to urinate.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The usually pale yellow liquid containing waste products, made by the kidneys, stored in the bladder and passed out of the body.

Word family

• urinous
• urinal
• uric
• uriniferous
• urinometer
• urinalysis
• urinary

Related words

• urea
• ureter
• urethra

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c 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)
5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press