visibility

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin vīsibilitās (“the condition of being seen, conspicuousness”),^[2][3][4][5] a word used by Tertullian,^[2] formed on vīsibilis (“that can be seen”), the source of visible, with the noun suffix that became -ity.^[2][4][6] The Latin adjective comes from videō (“to see”).^[3] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English also allow a borrowing of visibilité,^[7][8] and Johnson (1755) took it from the French word.^[9] The OED compares visibleté, visibilità and visibilidad.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The condition of being visible: Etymonline dates the form visibilite to about 1400,^[3] the Shorter Oxford to late Middle English,^[7] and Merriam-Webster to the 15th century.^[4] The OED's first quotation, from 1581, speaks of the visibility of the Church,^[2][10] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1575–85.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The 16th-century quotations come from the Reformation debate over whether the true Church must always be visible in the world;^[2] Johnson (1755) still illustrates the sense "openly discoverable, conspicuousness" with the perpetual visibility of the church.^[9] From 1614 the word was used of things in general,^[2][10] while the sense "a visible thing" dates from 1628.^[2] Johnson used it in 1775 for a sight worth seeing, a sense now obsolete.^[2][4] The rare senses "appearance" (1669, in Bunyan) and "the faculty of sight" (1616–1733) did not last.^[2] The meteorological and naval sense, how far one can see under the conditions of light and weather, is recorded from 1914,^[2][3] and the figurative sense, prominence in the public eye, from 1958.^[2][3][10]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – visibilite, the condition of being visible.^[3]
• 1581 – the visibility of the Church.^[2]
• 1614 – of things in general.^[2]
• 1628 – a visible thing.^[2]
• 1914 – the distance at which things can be seen in given conditions.^[2][3]
• 1958 – prominence in public awareness.^[2][3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The state or quality of being visible; how easily something can be seen: Reflective strips improve the visibility of runners at night.
2. The greatest distance at which objects can be clearly seen, as affected by light and weather: Fog cut visibility on the motorway to fifty metres.
3. The degree to which someone or something attracts public notice; prominence.

Word family

• intervisibility
• nonvisibility

Related words

• visible
• vision
• invisibility
• evident

References

1. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)