The word entered English in 1652, from Latin. The physician John French used its earliest recorded sense in his guide to four medicinal wells near Knaresborough in Yorkshire, describing a herbal remedy to ease the body.

Latin gave English the word directly, in 1652. The Oxford English Dictionary and other reference works disagree on this point, some tracing the word through French first, its own form already established by the 1650s. John Milton used the word in 1671, in Samson Agonistes, for something capable of easing grief and anxious thought.

Behind the Latin word lay a verb meaning 'to soothe'. That verb came from an adjective meaning 'mild' and behind that lies a Proto-Indo-European root, *lē-, meaning 'to let go'. The same root gave Greek a word meaning 'to be weary'.

LATE and LAST share the same distant root. LATE entered English from Old English, originally meaning slow, or sluggish, before narrowing to describe something occurring after an expected time. LAST began as the same word taken to its extreme, meaning slowest of all, and eventually, following all others.

From 1672 to 1767 the word could also serve as a noun, naming a physical dressing used to soothe a wound. By 1787 it had settled into the meaning most familiar today, describing a person or their actions as inclined towards tolerance. Charles Dickens used it in 1870, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, urging that people show one another far more of this quality than they typically do.

Etymon #85

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