Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “sabotage” come from?

Sabotage comes from French sabotage, a noun formed from French sabot plus the suffix -age, with sabot deriving from Latin -aticum and -icus, which trace to Proto-Indo-European -kos.

sabotage (English): A deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy...

Definitions

  1. A deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy...

Ancestry of “sabotage”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1Frenchsabotagesabotage
2French-ageForming nouns with the sense of "action or result...
3Middle French-ageforms nouns with the sense of "action or result...
4Old French-ageforms nouns with the sense of 'action or result...
5Old Occitan-atgesuffix used to form masculine nouns
6Latin-āticum—

Words derived from “sabotage”

  • sab
  • antisabotage
  • cybersabotage
  • sabotager
  • sabotageable
  • self-sabotage
  • サボタージュ
  • サボタージ
Every word from Latin -āticum →