The word entered English in the late fourteenth century, from French and Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer used it in his translation of The Consolation of Philosophy, written by the Roman statesman Boethius while awaiting execution, describing walls decorated with ivory and glass.

French delivered the word into English, though the French word never meant the same thing. In French, first recorded in 1380, it named a type of shop.

Behind the Latin word lay liber, a different meaning entirely, the inner bark of a tree. Romans are believed to have once written on this material before other surfaces replaced it. The etymologist Michiel de Vaan calls the deeper connection only a surmise, tracing it to an ancient root meaning simply to strip, or to peel.

LIBEL and LIBRETTO share the same Latin root. LIBEL entered English around 1300, from a Latin word meaning simply a little book, or a written statement of any kind. Only in the 1610s did it narrow to mean something false or damaging to someone's reputation. LIBRETTO entered English much later, in 1742, from Italian, naming the words written for an opera or a musical work.

By the 1820s the word had found a strange new home in London's theatre district, naming shops that sold nothing but tickets for the evening's performance. Charles Dickens, writing in 1836, described the same word attached to seaside establishments where fashionable visitors gathered to gossip and be seen. Borrowing was almost as an afterthought.

Etymon #78

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