Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “body” come from?

Body comes from Middle English body, Old English bodiġ, and Proto-West Germanic bodag, with ultimate origins in Proto-Indo-European bʰewdʰ-.

body (English): Physical frame; Main section; Coherent group

Definitions

  1. Physical frame; Main section; Coherent group

Ancestry of “body”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1Middle Englishbody—
2Old Englishbodiġ—
3Proto-West Germanicbodagbody, trunk, corpse
4Proto-Turkic*boda-—

Words derived from “body”

  • bodies
  • everybody
  • nobody
  • somebody
  • bodily
  • antibody
  • embodiment
  • embody
  • bodied
  • bodyguard
  • bodice
  • bodybuilding
  • bodywork
  • busybody
  • autoantibody
  • bodybuilder
  • interbody
  • disembodiment
  • bodyweight
  • multibody
  • waterbody
  • homebody
  • underbody
  • midbody
Every word from Proto-Turkic *boda- →