Word.ws English Dictionary

etymon

/ˈɛt.ɪ.mɒn/US/ˈɛt.ə.mɑn/

etymon noun: the original or earlier form of an inherited or borrowed word, affix, or morpheme either from an earlier period in a language's development, from an ancestral language, or from a foreign language.

etymon: An antique book with metal clasps on a wooden surface
Photo by Jan-Willem van Braak on Unsplash

Noun

etymon (plural etyma or etymons)

  1. The original or earlier form of an inherited or borrowed word, affix, or morpheme either from an earlier period in a language's development, from an ancestral language, or from a foreign language.
    • Here such cases as ghost words & misglosses, secondary semantics, different etymologies for one etymon or one etymology for different etyma, and finally semantic overpermissiveness are discussed.2006, Folia orientalia - Volumes 42-43, page 467
    • The resulting citation collection was databased and coded for meaning, etymon, and date range (earliest and latest occurrence found).2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 5
    Synonyms:
    ancestor, etym
    Antonyms:
    derivative, reflex

etymon meaning in Arabic

etymon in Arabic

ancestral form or source word
أَثَلَة ʔaṯala

Synonyms of etymon

Antonyms

Forms of etymon

pluraletyma
pluraletymons

Origin of etymon

From Ancient Greek ἔτυμον (étumon, “the true sense of a word according to its origin”), from ἔτυμος (étumos, “true, real, actual”).

Words formed from etymon

Questions about etymon

What does etymon mean?
Etymon means the original or earlier form of an inherited or borrowed word, affix, or morpheme either from an earlier period in a language's development, from an ancestral language, or from a foreign language.
What is etymon in Arabic?
Etymon in Arabic is أَثَلَة (ʔaṯala). See Etymon meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is etymon?
Etymon is a noun.
How do you pronounce etymon?
Etymon is pronounced /ˈɛt.ɪ.mɒn/ (UK).
What is the plural of etymon?
The plural of etymon is etyma.

Words near etymon in the dictionary

  1. etymologizers
  2. etymologizes
  3. etymologizing
  4. etymology
  5. etymologyless
  6. etymon
  7. etymonic
  8. etymonically
  9. etymons
  10. etymothesis
  11. etyms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: etymon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-etymon.wav.

Cite this entry: “etymon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/etymon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.