English
list
List comes from Middle English lī̆st ‘band, stripe’.
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English list
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1595, The Life and Death of King Richard the Second: “On pain of death, no person be so bold…”.
Lineage
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500lī̆stWiktionary, English list‘band’
- Englishearliest quotation 1595listWiktionary, English list. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1595, The Life and Death of King Richard the Second: “On pain of death, no person be so bold…”
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with list, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *leys- ‘to trace, track’
7 more relatives in the full family tree
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Another origin of list
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*ḱlews-‘to hear’reconstructed
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*ḱlus-tí-sreconstructed
- Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*hlustiz‘hearing’reconstructed
- Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*hlustireconstructed
- Old Englishc. 450–1150hlyst‘hearing’
- Old Englishc. 450–1150hlystan‘to listen’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500listen
- Englishtodaylist
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Today it means
noun A strip of fabric, especially from the edge of a piece of cloth.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “list”. 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 / Middle English lī̆st / list