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Etymology and origin of the English word weal

English has two words spelled weal: well-being, from Old English, and the raised mark on the skin, an alteration of wale first recorded much later.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

weal1 well-being

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
899 before 899, Alfred's translation of Boethius
Inherited from
Old English wela via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Proto-West Germanic *welan-

Etymology

The word for well-being is inherited from Middle English wele,[5][1] inherited from Old English wela (“wealth, riches; welfare, prosperity”),[6][3][7] from Proto-West Germanic *welan-,[8][3] from the same Germanic base as the adverb well.[7][8][9] It is cognate with Old Saxon welo and Old High German wolo.[7][10][6] Etymonline, following Watkins, traces it to Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“to wish, will”), which also gave will.[3][11] In Middle English, some forms and expressions show the influence of, or confusion with, the adverb well, and the OED thinks this association also shaped the word's meanings.[5][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Wealth and riches, the main Old English sense: Barnhart cites Alfred's translation of Boethius, before 899,[2] and the OED's first record is the Old English translation of Bede.[7] The sense "happiness, prosperity" is also Old English, in Genesis B.[7]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth–Toller separates "wealth, riches" from "prosperity, happy estate" in Old English.[6] The sense of riches died out: the plural is last recorded in 1692 and the mass noun in 1925, while well-being continued.[7] Paired alliteratively with woe since Old English, the word often meant all circumstances, good and bad; a fruit in a mid-13th-century account of Genesis "kenned wel and wo".[3][7] Chaucer used it 32 times and Gower 21 times for prosperity, success or happiness.[12] In the 15th century it was extended to the welfare of a whole community, the common good,[7][3] which led to the sense of a state or community in the 1510s, suggested already by commonweal in the mid-14th century.[3] Shakespeare's Coriolanus has weals-man, a statesman.[3][9] Johnson (1755) defined it as happiness, prosperity, a flourishing state.[13] The word is now archaic, kept mainly in weal and woe and the public weal.[10][1] It stayed in everyday use in Scots and in the dialects of Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire, where a Yorkshire proverb held that "women and weal can never agree".[14]

Timeline

  • before 899 – Old English wela, wealth, riches.[2][7]
  • c. 1225 – a person who is a source of happiness (obsolete by 1794).[7]
  • c. 1300 – a display of wealth, splendour (obsolete by 1508).[7]
  • 1435 – the common good, in the Rolls of Parliament.[7][3]
  • 1444 – the weal of peace, public order (obsolete by 1886).[7]
  • 1510s – a state or community.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (archaic) A sound or prosperous state; welfare, happiness: in weal and woe.[1][10][9]
  2. (archaic) The welfare of a community; the common good: the public weal.[10][7][9]
  3. (obsolete, Old English–1925) Wealth, riches.[1][10][7]
  4. (obsolete) A state or body politic; a commonweal.[1][10]

Word family

  • commonweal
  • wealsman
  • wealsome

weal2 raised mark on the skin

Confidence
Established
First attested
1723 Defoe, Colonel Jack
Ultimate origin
Old English walu

Etymology

The mark on the skin is an alteration from English wale,[3][2][1][11] which is from Old English walu (“ridge, mark on the flesh”).[15][8] Its spelling comes from confusion with wheal, a pustule,[7][9][1] which is from Old English hwelian (“to form pus”).[3][7] The OED calls the noun a modern variant of wale.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

To mark the flesh with such ridges: the verb in Defoe's Colonel Jack (1723).[7] The Shorter Oxford finds the verb earlier, in the late 16th century, spelled wheal.[9] For the noun, the OED, Barnhart and Etymonline give 1821, in John Clare's Village Minstrel,[7][2][3] while Merriam-Webster gives about 1798.[1]

Semantic evolution

The word kept the sense of its source, wale, and took over its spelling from wheal.[7] The Shorter Oxford adds a medical use from the early 19th century, a raised red and often itchy area of skin, as in urticaria, and a general sense "ridge" from the mid-19th century.[9] In the dialects, weale was also a Dorset and Somerset spelling of wale, a long ridge of fresh-cut hay.[14]

Timeline

  • 1723 – verb, to mark the flesh with ridges.[7]
  • 1821 – noun, a ridge raised on the flesh by a blow from a rod or lash, in John Clare.[7][2] Merriam-Webster dates it to about 1798.[1]
  • early 19th century – in medicine, a raised, itchy area of skin.[9]
  • mid-19th century – any ridge.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A raised mark on the skin left by a blow from a whip or rod; a welt: The cane left a red weal across his palm.[10][1][7]
  2. (medicine) A raised, usually red and itchy area of skin, as in urticaria.[9]

Verb

  1. To raise such marks on the skin, as by lashing.[1][7][9]

Usage notes

Collins numbers these words in the opposite order and treats wheal as a variant spelling of the mark on the skin,[10] and the OED has that wheal as a misspelling of it.[7] Etymonline dates wheal, a mark from a whip or blow, to 1808.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b 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)
  6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  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 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)
  15. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.

Related etymologies

  • eldest · also from Old English
  • scrub · also from Old English
  • shale · also from Old English
  • midway · also from Old English
  • ale · also from Old English
  • pike · also from Old English
  • strand · also from Old English
  • staple · also from Old English
Cite this entry

“Weal.” Etymologically, 5 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/weal. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·