English
labile
Labile comes from Latin lābilis ‘slipping, transitent’, and goes back to lābor ‘to slip, slide, glide’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CElābor‘to slip, slide, glide’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CElābilis‘slipping, transitent’
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600labile
- Englishearliest quotation 1603same form
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CElābor‘to slip, slide, glide’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CElābilis‘slipping, transitent’
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600labile
- Englishearliest quotation 1603same form
Earliest quotation: 1603, Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes […]: “Pythagoras [said] that each thing or matter was ever…”
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *(s)leh₂b-
through Latin lābor ‘to slip, slide, glide’
labour, collaboration, collapse, laboratory, elaborate, lava, lapse, laborious, 10 more
Today it means
adj Liable to slip, err, fall, or apostatize.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Latin lābor / labile