mixture

Forms

mixture f (plural mixtures)^[1] Old French misture (late 12th century) and mixture (about 1220); misture is still found in 1545.^[2] The inherited Old French form was mesture.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin mixtūra (“mixing, blending, coupling”), taken over twice, in the Middle Ages and again in the 16th century.^[2][3][5] The Latin noun is formed on mixtus, the past participle of misceō (“to mix”).^[3][6]

Old French also had the inherited form mesture (“mixture”) (about 1230), which also meant méteil, mixed wheat and rye (about 1200), a sense kept in some dialects;^[2][3] The borrowed word took its place.^[2][3] Cognate with Occitan mixtura, Spanish mistura and Italian mistura.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found as misture in the late 12th-century French Sermons of Saint Bernard, meaning a mixture or blend in a figurative sense; about 1220 Gui de Cambrai's Barlaam et Josaphat has the phrase faire sa mixture de, “to meddle with” something.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century the word took the more concrete sense of any mixture (Palsgrave, 1530) and, in pharmacy, of a mixture of drugs (Ambroise Paré, 1575).^[2][3] It seems to have been rare before the 18th and especially the 19th century;^[3][8] the BHVF finds the pharmaceutical sense once in Paré and regularly only from 1793.^[9]

In the 19th century it took its everyday, more or less pejorative sense of a food or drink whose ingredients are hard to make out, and, figuratively, of an odd and complex blend.^[3][10] It also became a technical word: an organ stop with several pipes to each note (jeu de mixture, 1852), a mixture of cereals sown together (Littré, 1868, like méteil), and a coating used by engravers and potters (1903), in which sense it overlaps with mixtion.^[2][3]

Timeline

• c. 1190 – Misture “blend” in the Sermons of Saint Bernard.^[2][6][8]
• c. 1220 – The spelling mixture in Gui de Cambrai's Barlaam et Josaphat.^[2]
• c. 1230 – The inherited form mesture “mixture” in the Roman de Silence.^[2]
• 1530 – Palsgrave records mixture as any mixture.^[2]
• 1575 – Ambroise Paré uses it of a pharmaceutical mixture.^[2]
• 1852 – Jeu de mixture, an organ stop.^[2][3]
• 1868 – Littré records the sense “mixed cereals sown together”.^[2][7]
• 1878 – The derived verb appears as the participle mixturé in Renan.^[2]
• 1903 – The sense “engravers' and potters' coating” is recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (technical) A mixture of chemical or pharmaceutical substances, usually liquids.^[10][2]
2. A food or drink whose ingredients are hard to make out, often unpleasant: il a bu une étrange mixture.^[10][3]
3. (figurative) A complex or bizarre blend.^[10][3]
4. (agriculture) A mixture of cereals sown together.^[7][6]
5. (music) Jeu de mixture: an organ stop with several pipes to each note.^[2][3]

Word family

• mixturer

Related words

• mixte
• mixtion
• méteil
• Latin mixtūra

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 o p q r s Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
5. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 6/2, 196b
6. ^ a b c d Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
7. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Quemada, Bernard, ed. (1959–2006), Datations et documents lexicographiques (Base historique du vocabulaire français, BHVF), Paris: Klincksieck / CNRS / Champion; ATILF
10. ^ a b c d Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert