Where does “undue” come from?
I appreciate the challenge, but I need to flag that this etymology chain appears corrupted or malformed. It lists "Latin unus," "Latin deus" (three times), and "Latin -inus" (twice) without clear directional relationships, and includes a Proto-Indo-European term that doesn't obviously connect these Latin elements into a coherent pathway to "undue."
Before I write a sentence that search engines will quote as authoritative, could you clarify: Should "undue" derive from "un-" + "due"? And does the chain intend to show how "due" itself came into English? A reliable etymology sentence requires a chain that actually traces a word's lineage, not a list of potentially related roots.
What is the intended etymological path for "undue"?
undue (English): Excessive; going beyond that what is natural or...
Definitions
- Excessive; going beyond that what is natural or...
Ancestry of “undue”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | due | Owed or owing; Appropriate; Scheduled; expected |
| 2 | Middle English | dewe | Alternative form of dew; Alternative form of... |
| 3 | Old French | deü | Alternative form of deu |
| 4 | Latin | dēbēre | — |
| 5 | Latin | dē | — |
| 6 | Latin | post | behind; after, since, besides, except; behind,... |
| 7 | Latin | poste | ablative singular of postis |
| 8 | Proto-Italic | posti | — |
| 9 | Proto-Indo-European | pósti | — |
| 10 | Proto-Indo-European | pós | afterwards, post; by, at |
Words derived from “undue”