Where does “chairman” come from?
Chairman derives from English chair and English man, with chair coming from Middle English man, which adopted Latin cathedra meaning "seat," ultimately from Ancient Greek καθέδρα and the prefix κατά combined with a root in Proto-Indo-European ḱóm.
chairman (English): A person presiding over a meeting; The head of a...
Definitions
- A person presiding over a meeting; The head of a...
Ancestry of “chairman”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | chair | An item of furniture used to sit on or in,... |
| 2 | English | Chuck | a Chuck Taylor All-Stars shoe |
| 3 | English | chock | Any object used as a wedge or filler, especially... |
| 4 | French | choquer | to hit, to collide; to shock |
| 5 | German | schockieren | to shock |
| 6 | Spanish | chocar | to crash; to bump into, to collide with; to... |
| 7 | Portuguese | chocar | to brood; to hatch; to linger |
| 8 | Russian | шоки́ровать | to horrify, to scandalize, to shock |
| 9 | Russian | -и́ровать | a productive verbal suffix, also used to create new verbs, especially from loanwords |
| 10 | German | -ieren | Verb suffix: it and its inflected forms are found... |
| 11 | French | -er | Forms infinitives of first-conjugation verbs |
| 12 | English | -er | A person or thing that does an action indicated... |
| 13 | Middle English | -er | agentive suffix; agent noun suffix |
| 14 | Old French | -er | Alternative form of -ier, verbal suffix;... |
| 15 | Latin | -āre | first conjugation |
| 16 | Proto-Italic | -āō | Forms primarily denominative verbs |
| 17 | Proto-Indo-European | -eh₂yéti | Creates iterative/ frequentative/ intensive... |
| 18 | Proto-Indo-European | -yéti | Creates intransitive, often deponent,... |