vibrate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin vibrātus, the past participle of vibrō (“to move quickly to and fro, shake, brandish”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The Latin verb is also the source of French vibrer, Spanish vibrar and Italian vibrare.^[2] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace it to a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *weip- (“to turn, vacillate, move quickly to and fro”);^[4][7] Ayto and Klein give the base as *weib-, the source also of weave, whip and wipe.^[8][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of persons, to move to and fro in a fight: 1616, in J. Lane's continuation of Chaucer's Squire's Tale; this sense soon died out.^[2][3][4] Merriam-Webster dates the verb to 1641, in the sense "to throw, launch".^[5] The participle vibrate, "vibrated", is found earlier, about 1420 in Lydgate,^[2][4] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the verb to Late Middle English, in the sense of giving out light or sound as if by vibration.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The verb entered English in the 17th century with the Latin senses of brandishing and hurling (1634, 1641),^[2] but its lasting use came from the new science: in 1667 the Philosophical Transactions used it of a pendulum swinging to and fro, or measuring seconds by its swings.^[2][3][4] Johnson (1755) gave it as transitive, "to brandish; to move to and fro with quick motion" and "to make to quiver".^[11] In the 18th century it came to mean to quiver or shake rapidly (Burke, 1757), and to be used of sounds that resound in the ear (Pope, 1734) and, in physics, of regular oscillation (1774).^[2] The figurative sense, to waver between two extremes, is recorded from 1782.^[2] Vibration is recorded from 1656, in Hobbes.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1420 – the participle vibrate, vibrated, in Lydgate.^[2]
• 1616 – to move to and fro in a fight (obsolete).^[2][3]
• 1634 – to brandish a sword (obsolete).^[2]
• 1641 – to throw or hurl.^[2][5]
• before 1648 – to give out light or sound by vibration.^[2]
• 1667 – of a pendulum, to swing to and fro; to measure seconds by swinging.^[2][3]
• 1734 – of sounds, to resound.^[2]
• 1757 – to quiver or shake rapidly.^[2]
• 1774 – in physics, to oscillate.^[2]
• 1782 – figurative, to waver between extremes.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To move rapidly back and forth; to quiver, shake or throb: The phone vibrated on the desk.^[12][5][2]
2. To swing to and fro, as a pendulum does; to oscillate.^[12][5][2]
3. Of a sound, to resonate or resound.^[12][2]
4. To waver or fluctuate between two choices or states.^[12][5][2]
5. In physics, to undergo a periodic oscillation.^[12][2]
6. To cause something to vibrate.^[12][5]
7. To give out sound or light by vibration.^[12][5][2]
8. To mark or measure by oscillation, as a pendulum marks seconds.^[5][2]
9. (archaic) To throw or hurl.^[5][2]

Word family

• vibratingly
• revibrate
• vibratory
• unvibrated

Related words

• vibrant
• vibratile
• vibration
• vibrative
• vibrato
• vibrator
• wipe
• whip
• waive
• waif

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins