voluble

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English voluble, also volible,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French voluble^[4][3] or directly borrowed from Latin volūbilis (“rolling, turning; fluent”).^[5][2][6][7] The OED and Merriam-Webster allow either source, French or Latin.^[5][8] The Latin adjective is from volvō (“to turn around, roll”),^[7][4][8] with -bilis,^[8][9] from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“to turn, revolve”).^[7][4] It is akin to Old English wealwian (“to roll”), the source of wallow.^[8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Able to turn or revolve: the first record is volible in the Wycliffite Bible, before 1382, of the wheels in Ezekiel 10:13, volible rendering Latin volūbiles and glossed "turnynge about".^[2][3] The OED starts its record later, with the sense "liable to change" in 1575.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The physical sense of ready turning came first: heaven in Bokenham (1447) is uoluble & euere turnyng.^[2] It led to a sense of change, and the word could mean inconstant from the early 15th century, a meaning now rare.^[2][7][5] The Latin adjective was already applied to fluent speech,^[7][3] and English followed in the late 16th century: Barnhart and Etymonline find "talkative" from the 1580s,^[3][7] the OED first with Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost in 1598,^[5][10] and the Oxford Dictionary of English dates the modern meanings to that period.^[11] Trench notes that the word once had the neutral force fluent has now, as when Hacket praises Archbishop Abbott's grave and a voluble eloquence, whereas by his time it implied speech freer and faster than it should be;^[12] Milton's Paradise Lost returns to the physical meaning.^[12] Johnson (1755) still gives rolling first, and the nimble tongue only third, with Addison on a woman's tongue, so wonderfully voluble and flippant.^[13]

Timeline

• before 1382 – volible, turning, of wheels.^[2][3]
• 1575 – liable to change, inconstant.^[5]
• 1589 – capable of ready rotation; moving rapidly and easily, in Puttenham.^[5]
• 1598 – of a person or of discourse, fluent, in Shakespeare.^[5][10] Barnhart dates this sense to 1588.^[3]
• 1662 – capable of being rolled up.^[5]
• 1753 – in botany, twining.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Speaking easily, quickly and at length; fluent or talkative.^[14][8][6]
2. Of speech, marked by a great and ready flow of words.^[6][5]
3. (botany, rare) Of a stem, twining or twisting.^[14][8][6]
4. (archaic) Turning or rolling easily, as on an axis.^[14][8][6]
5. (rare) Liable to change; fickle.^[8][6][5]

Word family

• volubility
• volubly
• volubleness

Related words

• volume
• volute
• revolve
• wallow

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins