English
battery
Battery comes from Old French baterie ‘action of beating’, from batre ‘beat’, and ultimately from Latin battuō.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEbattuō‘beat’
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400batre‘beat’
- Old French, derivedc. 842–1400baterie‘action of beating’
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600batterie
- Englishearliest quotation 1766battery
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEbattuō‘beat’
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400batre‘beat’
- Old French, derivedc. 842–1400baterie‘action of beating’
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600batterie
- Englishearliest quotation 1766battery
Earliest quotation: 1766, John Entick, A New and Accurate History and Survey of London: “On this wharf [Tower Bridge wharf] there is a…”
The story
The electrical sense was coined by American polymath Benjamin Franklin by analogy with a military battery that his series of Leyden jars resembled.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *bʰedʰh₂- ‘to stab, dig’
through Latin battuō ‘beat’
through Old French batre ‘beat’
Today it means
noun A device used to power electric devices, consisting of one or more electrically connected electrochemical cells or (archaically) electrostatic cells.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Latin battuō / battery