English
cream
Cream comes from Middle English creime, from Old French creme, a blend of Late Latin chrisma ‘ointment’ and crāmum ‘cream’, of Gaulish origin.
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English cream
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1612, Thomas Shelton: “Welcome, O flower and cream of Knights-errant.”.
Lineage
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400cremeWiktionary, English cream
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500creimeWiktionary, English cream
- Englishearliest quotation 1612creamWiktionary, English cream. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1612, Thomas Shelton: “Welcome, O flower and cream of Knights-errant.”
The story
Figurative sense of "most excellent element or part" appears from 1581. Verb meaning "to beat, thrash, wreck" is 1929, U.S. colloquial. The U.S. standard of identity is from 21 CFR 131.3(a).
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with cream, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *gʰrey- ‘to smear’
3 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun The butterfat or milkfat part of milk which rises to the top; this part when separated from the remainder.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “cream”. 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 French creme / cream