The word was recorded in English by 1647, from Latin. L. Seaman, a political and theological writer, used it to describe the solemn, formal declaration that makes a man a king.
Latin gave English the word directly, without passing through French. It was built from a Latin adjective, formed from the name of a public gathering place in ancient Rome.
Behind that Latin gathering place lay a word meaning 'out of doors, or outside'. That word traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *dhwer-, meaning 'door, or doorway'.
DOOR and THYROID share the same root. DOOR is native to Old English, from the same ancient word for an entrance. THYROID entered English in the 1690s, from Greek, describing a gland shaped like an oblong shield, named after the shape of a door.
By the late eighteenth century the word still applied only to legal proceedings, as when Sir William Blackstone, an English jurist, described students distracted from their studies by these types of legal pursuits. Within twenty years the word had taken on a new meaning, describing scientific or medical evidence used for a type of investigation. By the late twentieth century the word had also come to describe anything done with extreme care and precision.
