English
average
Average comes from Middle French avarie ‘damage to ship or cargo’ (+ -age), via Old French from Old Italian avaria; earlier origin uncertain.
- Old Italianmodernavaria1
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400avarie1
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600avarie1‘damage to ship or cargo’
- Englishearliest quotation 1872average1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English average, which cites OED
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1872, Elliott Coues: “Gulls average much larger than terns, with stouter build…”.
Lineage
- Old ItalianmodernavariaWiktionary, English average, which cites OED
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400avarieWiktionary, English average, which cites OED
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600avarieWiktionary, English average, which cites OED‘damage to ship or cargo’
- Englishearliest quotation 1872averageWiktionary, English average, which cites OED. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1872, Elliott Coues: “Gulls average much larger than terns, with stouter build…”
first attested Borrowed from Middle French avarie (“damage to ship or cargo”), from Old French avarie, from Old Italian avaria where it is first attested in the 12th century in the context of Mediterranean trade (as stated in Wiktionary’s etymology)
The story
The oldest meaning in English is “customs duty”. Borrowed from Middle French avarie (‘damage to ship or cargo’), from Old French avarie, from Old Italian avaria where it is first attested in the 12th century in the context of Mediterranean trade. The English suffix -age was added in analogy to words like damage.
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with average, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ- ‘to grab, to take’
through Proto-Italic *habēō
- prohibitive ← prohibitif ← prohibitīvus ← prohibeō ← habeō
through Latin habeō ‘to have, hold’
- able ← habilis
- due ← dewe ← deü ← devoir ← dēbēre
- ability ← abilite ← ableté ← habilitās ← habilis
- exhibition ← exhibicion ← exhibitio ← exhibeō
61 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “average”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Old Italian avaria / average