Etymologically
Log in

white

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 15 October 2026 at 01:53. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /(h)waɪt/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English whit, inherited from Old English hwīt (“bright, radiant; clear, fair”),[2][3] from Proto-Germanic *hwītaz.[4][5] Its cognates are Old Frisian hwīt, Old Saxon hwīt, Dutch wit, Old High German hwīz (modern German weiß), Old Norse hvítr and Gothic 𐍈𐌴𐌹𐍄𐍃 (hweits).[4][6] The root, which Watkins gives as Proto-Indo-European *kweit- (“white; to shine”), also gave Sanskrit श्वेत (śvetá, “white”) and Lithuanian šviesti (“to shine”), and probably Old Church Slavonic свѣтъ (světŭ, “light”).[2][7][8] wheat comes from the same Germanic base.[9][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of the colour of milk or snow.[2] Old English hwīt also meant “bright, radiant” and “clear, fair”,[2] and is recorded before 899, in King Alfred's translation of Boethius.[4]

Semantic evolution

In Old English white already meant “morally pure”, and in Middle English it could also mean “gracious, favourable”.[2] It was also the colour of lustrous metal, especially silver, whence white the hand “to bribe” (early 14th century).[2] By the late 13th century it described hair grey with age.[2] As a surname, first given for fair hair or skin, White is among the oldest in English, established before the Norman Conquest.[2] The noun meant the white of an egg about 1000,[4] white clothing about 1300, white wine by the late 14th century and the white of the eye about 1400,[2] and the player of the white pieces in chess by the late 15th century.[2] The adjective was applied to people of light-skinned, chiefly European, descent from about 1600, and the noun from the 1670s.[2] The colour's link with royalist causes dates from the late 18th century.[2] A whited sepulchre, a hypocrite, comes from Jesus's words about the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew,[11] and Whit Sunday refers to the white robes worn by early Christians at baptism.[11] The white elephant recalls a story that the King of Siam gave sacred white elephants, which could be neither used nor given away, to courtiers he disliked, ruining them with the cost of their keep.[4][11] Barnhart dates the sense “an unwanted possession” from 1928, in Galsworthy,[4] while Word Origins places the phrase in the early 18th century.[11]

Timeline

  • before 899 – Old English hwīt (Alfred's Boethius).[4]
  • before 1000 – verb hwītian, to make or become white.[4]
  • c. 1000 – noun, the white of an egg.[4]
  • late 13th century – of hair, white with age.[2]
  • c. 1300 – white clothing.[2]
  • early 14th century – white the hand, to bribe.[2]
  • late 14th century – white wine.[2]
  • c. 1400 – the white of the eye.[2]
  • late 15th century – the white pieces in chess.[2]
  • 1591 – whitewash, verb.[4]
  • c. 1600 – of light-skinned peoples.[2]
  • 1600 – white flag.[4]
  • 1741 – white lie.[4]
  • 1811 – White House (American).[4]
  • 1921 – white-collar (American).[4]
  • 1928 – white elephant, an unwanted possession (Galsworthy).[4]

Modern meaning

Adjective

  1. Of the colour of fresh snow or milk, the lightest of all colours, reflecting nearly all light.
  2. Pale, from fear, illness or shock.
  3. Silvery or pale grey: white hair.
  4. Light-coloured, in names of animals and plants: white clover.
  5. Belonging to a group of people with light skin, chiefly of European descent.

Noun

  1. The colour white.
  2. The white part of something, such as the white of an egg or of the eye.
  3. whites: white clothes, especially as a group in washing.
  4. A white person.
  5. The player with the white pieces in chess.

Verb

  1. (archaic) To make white; whitewash.
  2. white out: to cover (a mistake) with white correction fluid.

Word family

  • whiteness
  • whitish
  • nonwhite
  • off-white
  • egg white
  • flake white
  • titanium white
  • whitebeam
  • whiten
  • wheat
  • whiting
  • Whitsunday
  • edelweiss

Usage notes

The American slang sense “honourable, fair” (that's white of you), recorded from 1877, was based on racial prejudice[2][12] and is now offensive.[12]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ a b c d e Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster