The word first entered English around 1300, in an anonymous medieval narrative written in an everyday language. Later, around 1395, Geoffrey Chaucer used the same word when translating a famous French allegorical poem, written by Guillaume de Lorris and later extended by Jean de Meun.
Old French first used the word around 1125, built on a Latin phrase meaning to write in a particular style. The French word carried two meanings, a plain spoken language, and a story.
Behind the Latin phrase lay the name of a city, a name whose own origin is uncertain. The ancient grammarian Servius linked it to an old name for the river Tiber, and a root meaning 'to flow'. The modern lexicographer Ernest Klein instead proposed it came from Etruscan, the language spoken in Italy before Latin, and unrelated to it entirely.
URBAN and ROBUST may share a distant connection to this word's deepest root. The philologist T.G. Tucker, in his Etymological Dictionary of Latin, proposed that it was built from two Latin words, one meaning 'city', the other meaning 'strength'. URBAN comes from the first, ROBUST from the second, though the theory remains disputed.
By the late sixteenth century the word named any invented tale, set far from ordinary life. John Dryden, in his 1668 comedy Sir Martin Mar-all, used it for an outright lie, having a character declare he'd not believe a word of it. By 1745 it had softened into something gentler, a sense of mystery and glamour, and by 1858 it named a shared emotion.
