debout (French)
Where does "debout" come from?
The French adverb 'debout', meaning 'standing, stood up, upright'[1] or 'awake'[1], is formed by combining the element 'de'[1], meaning 'of'[1] and tracing back through Latin 'dē'[2] to Proto-Indo-European '*de'[2], with the noun 'bout'[1], meaning 'tip, end'[1], which originates from Old French 'bout' in the sense of a blow derived from Germanic origins via 'bouter'[3].
Open questions
- The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form '*de' is a linguistic reconstruction. [2]
Full etymology tree
- debout (French), 'standing, stood up, upright'
- compound de (French), 'of (expresses belonging)'
- inherited de (Middle French), 'of'
- inherited de (Old French), 'of'
- inherited de (Latin), 'of; concerning; about'
- inherited *dē (Proto-Italic)
- inherited *de (Proto-Indo-European), 'to, towards'
- inherited *dē (Proto-Italic)
- inherited de (Latin), 'of; concerning; about'
- inherited de (Old French), 'of'
- inherited de (Middle French), 'of'
- compound bout (French), 'end, extremity, tip (of a physical object)'
- inherited bout (Middle French)
- inherited bout (Old French), 'end (extremity)'
- derived bouter (Old French), 'to strike; to hit'
- borrowed (Germanic)
- derived bouter (Old French), 'to strike; to hit'
- inherited bout (Old French), 'end (extremity)'
- inherited bout (Middle French)
- compound de (French), 'of (expresses belonging)'
Descendants and derived words
- à dormir debout (French)
- être debout (French)
- pleuvoir à boire debout (French)
- tenir debout (French)
- vent debout (French)
Sources
Updated September 2026
Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris