vocable

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French vocable and directly borrowed from Latin vocābulum (“word, term, name, noun”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Collins and Dictionary.com name only the Latin.^[7][8] The French word meant a designation or name from the second half of the 13th century, in Old French, and a word from the late 14th.^[2] The Latin noun is formed from vocō (“to call”) and the instrumental suffix -bulum,^[2][8] and the verb is related to vōx (“voice”),^[9][10][11] from Proto-Indo-European *wekʷ-.^[12] The OED compares Old Occitan vocable, Catalan vocable, Spanish vocablo, Portuguese vocábulo, Italian vocabolo and German Vokabel (1446).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

That which a person or thing is called, a designation or name: 1440, in Capgrave's life of Saint Norbert.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the mid-15th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense "name" gave way to the more general "word or term", which Etymonline dates to the 1520s and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to 1530.^[3][4] The Shorter Oxford marks "name" as rare and gone by the early 17th century, and dates "word" to the mid-16th.^[13] The word then specialised: dictionaries define a vocable as a word regarded for its form, as a sequence of sounds or letters, apart from its meaning.^[13][7][4] In 18th-century Scots it was noted as a term for a word, and the plural vocables for a vocabulary, as in "The boy has lost his vocables".^[14] From 1880 the word is also used of a syllable or sound with no lexical meaning, sung as part of a melody.^[2]

Timeline

• 1440 – a designation, a name.^[2]
• 1520s – a word or term.^[3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates this sense to 1530.^[4]
• 1880 – a syllable or sound without lexical meaning, in a song.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A word considered as a sequence of sounds or letters, without regard to its meaning.^[7][4][13]
2. A word or term in general; an item of vocabulary.^[2][4]
3. A syllable or sound with no lexical meaning, sung as part of a melody.^[2]
4. An individual vocal sound; a vowel.^[7][4]
5. (obsolete) A name or designation.^[13][2]

Word family

• vocably

Related words

• vocabular
• vocabulary
• voice
• vocal
• vocation
• vouch

Usage notes

An adjective vocable, "capable of being uttered", has a separate source: it is formed from Latin vocāre and -able.^{[2][4][11][13]} The OED records it from 1796 in the phrase in vocable or visible (by words or actions), then from 1861 in the current sense,^[2] and the Shorter Oxford calls it rare.^[13] The OED's first edition (1920) gave only the pronunciation with /əʊ/ in the first syllable; it now also lists /ɒ/ and /ɑ/.^[2]

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 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 d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
13. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)