The word was first recorded in English in 1502, from Latin, by way of French. An anonymous religious text used it to describe a particular kind of sin.
French had already used the word by the late thirteenth century, to name a way of speaking. Behind the French form lay a Latin word, and behind that, a Greek word for someone who pretends not to know something.
That Greek word for someone hiding their true meaning is thought to be related to a verb meaning 'to speak'. That verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *were-, with the same meaning.
WORD and VERB share the same root, meaning 'to speak'. WORD is native to Old English, meaning speech. VERB entered English in the late fourteenth century, from Latin, originally meaning any word, before narrowing to name one specific part of speech.
By the early seventeenth century the word described the method used by Socrates, who feigned ignorance while questioning his students, exposing their own lack of knowledge. It was not until 1833 that the word took on its now common everyday sense, describing a type of event.
