cécité (French)

Where does "cécité" come from?

The French noun 'cécité', meaning blindness, was borrowed from Latin 'caecitātem'[1]. The Latin root traces back further to 'caecitas', which combines 'caecus' meaning blind or eyeless with the suffix '-tās'[2]. Moving further back in linguistic history, the term descends from Proto-Italic '*kaikos', which ultimately originates from the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed form '*kéh₂ikos', meaning one-eyed[3][4].

Open questions

• The Proto-Italic and Proto-Indo-European ancestral forms are reconstructed linguistics stages rather than directly attested terms. [3] [4]

Full etymology tree

• cécité (French), 'blindness (condition of being blind)'
  • borrowed caecitas (Latin), 'blindness'
    • derived caecus (Latin), 'blind'
      • inherited *kaikos (Proto-Italic), 'blind'
        • derived *kéh₂ikos (Proto-Indo-European), 'one-eyed, blind'
    • suffix -tas (Latin), '-ty, -dom, -hood, -ness, -ship; Used to form feminine abstract nouns indicating a state of being.'

Ancestors

• caecitas (Latin)

Sources

1. cécité (French) - Wiktionary
2. caecitas (Latin) - Wiktionary
3. caecus (Latin) - Wiktionary
4. kaikos (Proto-Italic) - Wiktionary

Updated September 2026

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Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris