Where does “excellence” come from?
Excellence comes from Old French excellence, from Latin excellentia, meaning the quality of excelling, ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root eǵ-.
excellence (English): The quality of being excellent; brilliance;...
Definitions
- The quality of being excellent; brilliance;...
Ancestry of “excellence”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Old French | excellence | — |
| 2 | Latin | excellentia | excellence, superiority; merit |
| 3 | Latin | excellēns | elevating, rising |
| 4 | Latin | excello | I elevate, raise up; I rise, elevate myself; I... |
| 5 | Latin | ex- | out, away; throughout; thoroughly |
| 6 | Latin | e | The name of the letter "E"; out of, from |
| 7 | Latin | ex | A name of the letter "X"; out of, from |
| 8 | Latin | commūnicō | to impart, share |
| 9 | Latin | commūnis | common, commonplace, ordinary, general, universal, shared, shared alike, of both sides, belonging to two or more together |
| 10 | Old Latin | com(m)oinis | — |
| 11 | Proto-Italic | kommoinis | common |
| 12 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱom-moy-ni- | held in common |
| 13 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱóm | beside, near, by, with |
| 14 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱe | Deictic particle, here; Post-positional... |
| 15 | Middle English | kyt | — |
| 16 | Russian | кит | whale; genitive plural of ки́та |
| 17 | Old Church Slavonic | китъ | whale |
| 18 | Ancient Greek | κῆτος | whale, sea monster; abyss |