The word was recorded in English by 1374, from Old French. Geoffrey Chaucer, in Troilus and Criseyde, used it for an unseen force believed to stream down from the heavens.
Old French first used the word in the thirteenth century, with two different meanings, the same celestial force, and a second, meaning an ordinary flow of water. Behind it lay a Medieval Latin noun meaning ‘a flowing in’.
Behind the Latin word lay two parts, a prefix meaning 'into', and a verb meaning 'to flow'. Behind that verb lies a Proto-Indo-European root, *bhleu-, meaning 'to swell, or well up'. In its oldest sense, the word described an unseen fluid believed to flow down from the stars, shaping character and destiny.
AFFLUENT and CONFLUENCE share the same root. AFFLUENT entered English in the fifteenth century, first describing God's abundant grace, and later having a lot of money or owning a lot of things. CONFLUENCE entered English around the same time, naming the point where two rivers flow together, and later a general coming together of different things into one.
By 1439 the word had already been applied to human beings, a person's own charisma described using the same language as star-power. In 1664 the philosopher Henry More, in his Modest Enquiry into Mystery of Iniquity, added a simple ending, meaning 'one who does', to name such a person directly. By 1968 the new form named someone able to sway a shopper's choice of goods. In 2000, the writer Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, described the idea of a small, connected group capable of creating a trend.
