The word was first recorded in English by 1552, from Latin. The poet and antiquarian John Leland used it to describe a linguistic element being rejected.
Latin passed the word directly into English. It was built from a prefix meaning 'out', joined to a second element.
Behind that second element lay a Latin verb meaning 'to clap'. The deeper origin of that verb remains unknown, with no confirmed root beyond Latin.
APPLAUD and PLAUDIT share the same root, but with the opposite prefix, meaning 'toward' rather than 'out'. APPLAUD entered English in the late fifteenth century, meaning to approve, or praise. By the 1590s, specifically, it meant approval shown by clapping. PLAUDIT entered English in the 1620s, from a Latin actor's own request for applause at the end of a play.
By the early seventeenth century the word described an audience driving a performer off the stage through booing and jeering. Around the same period it also came to mean revealing the true nature of something false, or discrediting a theory once believed true. It was not until the late eighteenth century that the word first described something bursting with a force.
