The word was first recorded in English by 1398, borrowed independently from both Old French and Latin. John Trevisa, translating De Proprietatibus Rerum, a medieval encyclopaedia, used it to describe how blood strengthens and feeds every limb of the body.
Latin gave both Old French and English their own forms of the word. Its prefix, prae-, meant 'before'.
Behind that prefix lay a Latin verb meaning 'to have power, or be strong'. That verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *wal-, with the same meaning. The same root gave Old Irish its word for dominion, and Welsh its word for 'to be able'.
VALUE and WIELD share the same root, one meaning 'to be strong'. VALUE entered English around 1300, from a Latin verb meaning 'to be worth', a sense that grew directly from strength. WIELD is native to Old English, meaning to have power and sway over, and by around 1300 also to handle a weapon or tool.
By the early fifteenth century the word had come to describe having greater strength or power than a rival, and being victorious. By the mid-fifteenth century it was also used to persuade someone, a sense William Painter used in 1567, in his Palace of Pleasure, describing how one character's arguments won over another in a romantic tale. By 1544 the word had a theological meaning, describing the promise that the gates of hell would never overcome the Church. Then in the seventeenth century the word softened into its wider, modern sense.
