flame
/fleɪm/noun, verb
Visible burning gas; also passionate feeling
From Latin, transmitted through French into English flame (Flame).
Lineage
The story
A word for fire arrived in English with a little uncertainty already crackling inside it. Wiktionary describes Middle English flawme as a blend of Old French flame and flambe, the latter tied to Latin flammula, “little flame”; Etymonline instead traces the route through Anglo-French flaume to that same Latin diminutive. The deeper ancestry is also reported in two spellings: Wiktionary gives *bʰel-, while Etymonline gives *bhleg-, both glossed with shining or flashing. A flame could be romantic long before it was a sweetheart: the figurative “fire of passion” is medieval, while flame meaning “a sweetheart” is recorded from the 1640s. And its bright relatives include flamboyant—first describing flame-like architectural curves, then showy style—so a flamboyant person is, etymologically, putting on quite a display of fire.
Modern usage
To be excellent, or to insult someone electronically.
- Heard in
- internet slang
Words from the same roots
flame · Latin, transmitted through French into English, ‘Flame; blazing fire’
Derivedinflame, flaming, flamboyant, flambeau, flammable