The word was first recorded in English in 1350, from Latin, by way of French. The poet William of Shoreham used it in a religious poem, to describe an indelible mark left on the soul.
French had already used the word by the late thirteenth century. Behind the French form lay a Latin word, and behind that, a Greek word for an engraved mark, or an instrument used for marking.
A Greek verb meaning 'to engrave' lay behind that word for a mark. It traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *gher-, meaning 'to scrape, or scratch'.
GASH and GRAVE share the same root, meaning 'to cut, or scratch'. GASH entered English in the sixteenth century, describing a deep cut or wound. GRAVE is native to Old English, and once meant 'to engrave, or carve', a sense now obsolete except in the biblical phrase 'graven image', from the Ten Commandments.
By 1490, the word was used to describe letters. By the 1660s the word became central to plays or novels. And by the eighteenth century it had also come to describe an eccentric person.
Nine letters.
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