The word was first recorded in English in 1509, from French, and before that, Latin. Alexander Barclay, a poet and clergyman, used it in his translation of a German book describing the many kinds of fools found in society.
French had already used the word by 1355, in a translation of the Roman historian Livy. Behind the French form lay an earlier Latin word, close in spelling, though not identical.
Behind the Latin word lay a phrase, lanx satura, meaning 'a full dish', said to describe a plate piled with different kinds of fruit. That phrase traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *sa-, meaning 'to satisfy'. It has also been suggested the word instead comes from the language of the Etruscans, a civilisation that once ruled central Italy before Rome rose to power.
SATIATE and SATURATE share the same root. SATIATE entered English in the sixteenth century, from Latin, meaning to satisfy a desire or appetite. SATURATE entered English around the same time, meaning to soak or fill something.
For centuries, English and French writers wrongly believed the word came from the name of a mythical, half-goat woodland creature, a belief so widespread it altered the word's own spelling for hundreds of years. By 1589 the word named a distinct literary genre, alongside comedy and tragedy. By the 1690s its meaning had broadened beyond literature entirely, describing any circumstance that made something look ridiculous.
