Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “visible” come from?

Visible comes from Middle English visible, from Old French visible, from Latin visibilis meaning "able to be seen," derived from the verb videre meaning "to see," formed with the suffix -io, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root weyd- meaning "to see."

visible (English): Able to be seen

Definitions

  1. Able to be seen

Ancestry of “visible”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1Middle Englishvisible—
2Old Frenchvisiblevisible
3Latinvīsibilis—
4Latin-bilis-ble
5Proto-Italic-ðlis—
6Proto-Indo-European-dʰlis—
7Proto-Indo-European-dʰlomAlternative form of *-trom; instrumental suffix;...

Words derived from “visible”

  • visibly
  • nonvisible
  • hypervisible
  • intervisible
  • visibleness
  • subvisible
  • unvisible
  • infravisible
  • nonintervisible
  • unvisibly
Every word from Proto-Indo-European -dʰlom →