viscous

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English viscous, also viscouse and viscose,^[2][3] borrowed from Anglo-Norman viscous^[4][5][6][7] and directly borrowed from Late Latin viscōsus (“full of birdlime, sticky”),^[5][6][3][7] from Latin viscum (“mistletoe, birdlime made from its berries”), also viscus,^[4][3] with the suffix -ōsus.^[8][3] The Anglo-Norman adjective viscos, also visquous, is recorded from the second quarter of the 13th century.^[9] Compare Old French viscos,^[6][2] French visqueux, Italian viscoso, Spanish viscoso and Portuguese viscoso.^[4] The Latin noun has cognates in Ancient Greek ἰξός (ixós, “mistletoe, birdlime”) and Old High German wīhsila (“mahaleb or morello cherry”).^[3][10][5] De Vaan treats it as a word of Proto-Indo-European or a European loanword for mistletoe or another fruit-bearing tree, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *wiks- with metathesis in Latin,^[10] a form Barnhart also reconstructs;^[5] Etymonline instead derives it, probably, from Proto-Indo-European *weis- (“to melt away, flow”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Having a gluey or sticky character: the OED's first record is Lanfranc's Cirurgie, about 1400,^[4] and the Middle English Dictionary quotes the same work, on tiles made of clay "þat is viscous".^[2] Barnhart gives 1392,^[11][5] Etymonline the late 14th century,^[6] and Merriam-Webster the 14th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Birdlime gave the word its first sense, a thing that sticks; in Middle English it was at home in medical writing, used of thick matter in the body such as blood and humours, and could also stand as a noun for stickiness or a sticky substance.^[2] The form viscose ran beside it as an adjective from about 1400 to 1775 in the OED.^[4] Bacon used viscous figuratively in 1605,^[4] and Johnson (1755) defines it as "glutinous; sticky; tenacious", quoting Bacon on nitre.^[12] Botany applied it to sticky leaves from 1712.^[4][7] In physics, from 1830, it came to describe matter between solid and fluid, then a high resistance to flow,^[4][13] and viscous flow has meant laminar flow since 1930.^[4][7] It is also used of a slow, cloying style, as in Edmund Wilson's "viscous prose".^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – sticky, glutinous.^[4][2]
• before 1425 – noun, a sticky substance; later also stickiness.^[2]
• 1605 – figurative, adhesive, sticky, in Bacon.^[4]
• 1712 – of leaves, sticky.^[4]
• 1830 – in physics, imperfectly fluid.^[4]
• 1930 – of flow, laminar.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Thick and sticky; glutinous: a viscous syrup.^[14][3][7]
2. (physics) Having viscosity; resisting flow, not flowing freely.^{[14][3][13][7]}
3. Suggesting a gluey mass; slow and lacking fluidity, especially of style.^[3][4]
4. (botany) Of leaves, covered with a sticky secretion.^[4][7]

Word family

• viscously
• viscousness
• hyperviscous
• nonviscous

Related words

• viscid
• viscoid
• viscometer
• viscose
• viscosimeter
• viscosity
• vicious

Usage notes

Dictionary.com lists viscous, viscose and vicious as easily confused.^[8] The Middle English Dictionary records vicous among the erroneous spellings of the word,^[2] and Collins still gives viscose as a variant of the adjective.^[14]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins