Etymologically
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squelette

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /skə.lɛt/[1]

Forms

squelette m (plural squelettes)[1] Scelette (1552), squelete (before 1585), Greek-looking sceletos, skeletos in Paré and Montaigne, and squelette from before 1660.[2] Often feminine in the 17th century.[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin sceletus,[5][1] from Ancient Greek σκελετός (skeletós, “dried up; a dried body, mummy”);[5][2][6][1][7] Rey and Bloch and Wartburg take it straight from Greek.[2][6] The Greek adjective comes from σκέλλω (skéllō, “to dry up”),[2][4][8] a verb of obscure origin that has been compared with Germanic words for “dry, thin” such as English shallow.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Pontus de Tyard used scelette in 1552 for the bony frame of a vertebrate after death.[5][4] Ambroise Paré (1562) explains that the Greeks call the whole structure of the bones sceletos, “dry anatomy”.[5][8]

Semantic evolution

Skeletons mounted for teaching medicine are mentioned by Furetière (1690).[5] Bossuet made the skeleton the figure of Death (1662),[2][4] and by exaggeration it was said of a very thin person (1669), as Ronsard had already written “un schelette je semble”.[5][2]

At the end of the 17th century it came to mean any framework: the hull of a ship (1690), later a building or a landscape.[2][5] Of a work of the mind it means a bare outline (Rollin, 1726–1728); Voltaire wrote that a dictionary without quotations is a skeleton.[5][4] The adjective squelettique dates from 1834.[6]

Timeline

  • 1552 – Scelette (Pontus de Tyard).[5][6]
  • 1562 – Paré's sceletos.[5]
  • 1586 – Ronsard: “un schelette je semble”.[5]
  • 1662 – Death personified (Bossuet).[2][4]
  • 1669 – A very thin person.[5][2]
  • 1690 – The frame of a ship (Furetière).[5][2]
  • 1760 – Voltaire's “un dictionnaire sans citations est un squelette”.[5]
  • 1834 – Squelettique.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A skeleton, the bony frame of a vertebrate.[9][1]
  2. (figurative) A very thin person.[9][1]
  3. A framework or structure: le squelette d'un navire.[9][5]
  4. The bare outline of a work.[4][5]

Word family

  • squelettique

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  3. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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
  6. ^ a b c d e Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
  7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 12, 3a
  8. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
  9. ^ a b c Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert