English
consilience
Consilience comes from Latin saliō ‘to bound, jump, leap’.
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English consilience
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1840, William Whewell, Of the Logic of Induction: “Indeed in all cases in which from propositions of…”.
Earlier history uncertain. See Wiktionary.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEsaliōWiktionary, English consilience‘to bound, jump, leap’
- Englishearliest quotation 1840consilienceWiktionary, English consilience. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1840, William Whewell, Of the Logic of Induction: “Indeed in all cases in which from propositions of…”
Formed from ence
The story
From Latin con- (prefix indicating a being or bringing together of several objects) + saliō (‘to bound, jump, leap’) (modelled after resiliēns (‘rebounding’)) + -ence, influenced by concurrent. Coined by English polymath William Whewell in 1840 in his book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *sel- ‘jump, spring’
sale, savage, insult, salon, exile, salvage, silva, salle, sylvan, sill, somersault, slink, selva, seel, selly, 16 more
through Latin saliō ‘to bound, jump, leap’
result, salt, salad, sauce, sally, salmon, resilient, resilience, salient, salacious, exultant, resiliency, salience, 25 more
Today it means
noun The concurrence of multiple inductions drawn from different data sets.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “consilience”. 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 / Latin saliō / consilience