Etymograph

English

lute

Lute comes from Middle French lut, and goes back to Old French leüt.

  1. Old Frenchc. 842–1400leüt
  2. Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600lut
  3. Englishearliest quotation 1820lute

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

Earlier history uncertain.

Lineage

  1. Old Frenchc. 842–1400leüt
  2. Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600lut
  3. Englishearliest quotation 1820lute

Earliest quotation: 1820, John Keats, (please specify the poem): “in the air , her new voice luting soft”.

Linked words

through Arabic عَادَ ‘to return, to turn back’

oud, 2 more

through Middle French lut

luthier, 4 more

Another origin of lute

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*lew-‘dirt, mud’reconstructed
  2. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CElutum‘mud’
  3. Old Frenchc. 842–1400lut
  4. Englishtodaylute

Today it means

noun A fretted stringed instrument, similar to the guitar, having a bowl-shaped body or soundbox; any of a wide variety of chordophones with a pear-shaped body and a neck whose upper surface is in the same plane as the soundboard, with strings along the neck and parallel to the soundboard.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Old French leüt / lute

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