entry
list
/lɪst/A roster of items in a sequence.
From Germanic list (border).
from PIE *leizd- "border, band." The original Middle English sense is now obsolete. The sense of "enumeration" is
from Proto-Germanic *liston
from Middle English liste "border, edging, stripe" (late 13c.)
from Middle English liste "border, edging, stripe" (late 13c.)
from Middle English liste "border, edging, stripe" (late 13c.)
Word Ancestry
from PIE *leizd- "border, band." The original Middle English sense is now obsolete. The sense of "enumeration" is
from Proto-Germanic *liston
from Middle English liste "border, edging, stripe" (late 13c.)
from Middle English liste "border, edging, stripe" (late 13c.)
from Middle English liste "border, edging, stripe" (late 13c.)
What looks like a bland office word began as a strip of cloth. In Old English and Old French, a liste was a border, edging, or band — the kind of narrow trim you might sew onto a sleeve or see running along a tapestry. Then someone noticed that paper strips could also carry rows of names, and the word slid from fabric to paperwork; by around 1600, English was using list for a catalogue of items. That little semantic jump gives us blacklist, where the old notion of a written register still peeks through, and it also helps explain why list price sounds so bureaucratic and official. The word is not related to listen, despite the tempting resemblance; that one comes from a different Germanic path altogether. So a list is, etymologically speaking, a border that learned to line people up — one item after another, like clothes pinned neatly on a washing line.
The Story
What looks like a bland office word began as a strip of cloth. In Old English and Old French, a liste was a border, edging, or band — the kind of narrow trim you might sew onto a sleeve or see running along a tapestry. Then someone noticed that paper strips could also carry rows of names, and the word slid from fabric to paperwork; by around 1600, English was using list for a catalogue of items. That little semantic jump gives us blacklist, where the old notion of a written register still peeks through, and it also helps explain why list price sounds so bureaucratic and official. The word is not related to listen, despite the tempting resemblance; that one comes from a different Germanic path altogether. So a list is, etymologically speaking, a border that learned to line people up — one item after another, like clothes pinned neatly on a washing line.
Kin & Kindred
From 'list'·border, band, strip, edge
Derived Terms
English words from this root