Etymologically
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urine

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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
  • 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