English
calamitous
Calamitous comes from Latin calamitōsus ‘destructive, disastrous, ruinous, calamitous’, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- ‘to beat’.
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*kelh₂-‘to beat’reconstructed
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcalamitōsus‘destructive, disastrous, ruinous, calamitous’
- Frenchc. 1600–presentcalamiteux
- Englishearliest quotation 1646calamitous
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Lineage
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*kelh₂-‘to beat’reconstructed
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcalamitōsus‘destructive, disastrous, ruinous, calamitous’
- Frenchc. 1600–presentcalamiteux
- Englishearliest quotation 1646calamitous
Earliest quotation: 1646, Thomas Browne, Misapprehension: “[T]he fallacie of Æquivocation and Amphibologie, […] conclude from…”
Equivalent to calamity + -ous
Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- ‘to beat’
Latin calamitās ‘loss, damage’
Middle French calamité
English calamity
The story
Borrowed from French calamiteux (‘calamitous’) (see French -eux, English -ous), from Latin calamitōsus (‘destructive, disastrous, ruinous, calamitous’), a contraction of calamitātōsus, from calamitāt- + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of; prone to’ forming adjectives from nouns); calamitāt- is the oblique stem of calamitās (‘disaster, misfortune, calamity; damage, harm; loss’), from *calamis (‘damaged’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- (‘to beat; to break’)) + -tās (suffix forming abstract nouns denoting a condition or state).
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- ‘to beat’
clerk, holly, coup, clergy, holt, cleric, gladiator, clematis, clade, gladiolus, 31 more
Today it means
adj Causing or involving calamity; disastrous.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- / calamitous