Etymograph

English

frequency

Frequency comes from Latin frequentia ‘crowd, multitude, throng’, and perhaps goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰrekʷ- ‘to condense’.

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*bʰrekʷ-1‘to condense’uncertain
  2. Proto-Italicc. 1500–700 BCE*frekʷents1reconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfrequens2‘crowded, crammed, packed’
  4. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfrequentia2‘crowd, multitude, throng’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1958frequency2

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, Latin frequens
  2. 2 Wiktionary, English frequency
  3. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1958, 'Borderer', Ten Years of British Railways: “[…] the Plan incorporates in proper combination every available…”.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*bʰrekʷ-Wiktionary, Latin frequens‘to condense’uncertain
  2. Proto-Italicc. 1500–700 BCE*frekʷentsWiktionary, Latin frequensreconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfrequensWiktionary, English frequency‘crowded, crammed, packed’
  4. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfrequentiaWiktionary, English frequency‘crowd, multitude, throng’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1958frequencyWiktionary, English frequency. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1958, 'Borderer', Ten Years of British Railways: “[…] the Plan incorporates in proper combination every available…”

Word family

English words that share an ancestor with frequency, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.

through Proto-Indo-European *bʰrekʷ- ‘to condense’

  • farce ← farse ← farsa ← farciō ← *farkiō

4 more relatives in the full family tree

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Today it means

noun The rate of occurrence of anything; the relationship between incidence and time period.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “frequency”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Latin frequens. 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 / Proto-Indo-European *bʰrekʷ- / frequency