virgin

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈvɜː.dʒɪn/, US /ˈvɝː.dʒɪn/^[1]

Etymology

It is Middle English virgine, borrowed from Old French virgine (“virgin; the Virgin Mary”) (modern French vierge),^[2][3][4] a learned borrowing of Latin virgō (“maiden, unwedded girl”) (stem virgin-), also an adjective “fresh, unused”,^[2][3] probably related to virga (“young shoot, twig”) through the notion of youth.^[3][2][5] Barnhart traces it further to PIE *weis-g- “bending, pliant”.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

An unmarried or chaste woman revered in the Church: about 1200 in the OED and Etymonline, probably before 1200 in Barnhart, in the Trinity Homilies.^[6][3][2]

Semantic evolution

A woman who has never had sexual intercourse is from before 1310,^[6] and the Virgin Mary from before 1300.^[6] The word was applied to men as well as women in Middle English, about 1330, and in the plural to both before 1325.^[2] As an adjective, “pure, fresh, unused”, it was first said of wax about 1300, of honey and untilled soil in the mid-15th century, and of snow in the 16th;^[3] virgin for “new, unused” is in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (1590).^[2] A naive or inexperienced person is from 1953.^[6] The Virgin Islands were named in Spanish by Columbus for St Ursula and her 11,000 virgin martyrs.^[3] Virginal, the keyboard instrument of the 16th century, was perhaps so called because it was meant for young ladies.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – a chaste woman of the Church.^[6]
• c. 1300 – virgin wax, pure.^[3]
• a1300 – the Virgin Mary.^[6]
• a1310 – a woman who has not had sex.^[6]
• c. 1330 – of men.^[2]
• 1953 – an inexperienced person.^[6]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A person who has never had sexual intercourse.
2. (the Virgin) The Virgin Mary.
3. A woman who has taken a religious vow of chastity.
4. (informal) A person with no experience of something: a political virgin.

Adjective

1. Not yet used, touched or explored: virgin forest.
2. Of oil, obtained from the first pressing; not processed.
3. Chaste, or of a virgin.

Word family

• unvirgin
• Virginia
• extra-virgin
• virginal
• virginity
• vestal virgin
• virgin birth
• Virgin Islands

Related words

• Virgo

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press