English
fluency
Fluency comes from Late Latin fluēns ‘flowing, streaming, pouring’, and goes back to Latin fluō ‘to flow’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfluō‘to flow’
- Late Latinc. 200–600 CEfluēnsas fluentia‘flowing, streaming, pouring’
- Englishearliest quotation 1996fluency
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfluō‘to flow’
- Late Latinc. 200–600 CEfluēnsas fluentia‘flowing, streaming, pouring’
- Englishearliest quotation 1996fluency
Earliest quotation: 1996, Vera Morris, Sara Crewe: “She has fluency, nobility, / Elegance and symmetry, /…”
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁- ‘to swell, blow’
blow, blast, inflation, flavor, bliss, bladder, feeble, inflate, blithely, blare, blather, conflate, blasé, bleat, flatulence, soufflé, 45 more
through Proto-Indo-European *bʰluH-yé-ti
through Latin fluō ‘to flow’
influence, fluid, influx, flux, fluctuate, fluctuation, fluorine, flume, confluence, fluvial, fluorite, affluence, fluor, confluent, 26 more
Today it means
noun The quality of smoothness of flow.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Latin fluō / fluency