Demurring on the etymology of “demure”

Say what you want about social media—and there is a lot you can—but there’s nothing else that can quite make a vocabulary word go viral. 

Right on the heels of “messy” brat is the lexical trend of “modest” demure. TikTok influencer Jools Lebron popularized the word earlier this month in videos describing how to be “demure,” “mindful,” “considerate,” or “cutesy” in various everyday ways.

So, how about demure as a word? Where does it come from? 

We should be very mindful, very demure about any commentary on the origin of demure, as its presents some obscurity.

History and origin of demure

The word demure goes back to the 1300s in Middle English—a time when our language was borrowing a great many words from the Norman French. 

The Oxford English Dictionary currently first cites demure in a 1377 poem about the death of Edward III, where demure is used to describe the sea as “calm” or “settled.”

By the 1500s, we find demure settling into its still current sense of “serious” or “reserved” in demeanor. Since then, demure has evolved some nuances:

• It came to describe an affected or performed modesty or shyness
• It has often been used of women, especially of their dress or appearance

Resonances here to TikTok’s demure—intentional or not—are rich and relevant. Lebron is transgender, often using demure in the context of her appearance, and use of demure, both by her and the subsequent trend, is frequently ironic or playful. 

Demure as “mature”?

One line of thinking on the origin of demure is that it comes from Old French meur, variously meaning “mature, ripe, serious, grave, discreet, considered, settled.”

Demureness, so the metaphor would imply, requires a modesty, consideration, and discretion associated with maturity. 

As for its de- part? English, apparently, may have just added that. (Not very demure.)

Mature here is key, for the Old French meur is plucked from from the Latin mātūrus, “ripe, mature, full-grown, opportune.” More on that in a moment.

Demure as “demur”?

Another line of thinking is that demure is related to a word easily confused with it: demur, today meaning “to object, show reluctance, raise doubts.”

Demur comes from the French demorer, and it’s thought that the past participle of this verb—demoré, “delayed, held back”—could have produced demure. 

(The French demorer develops from Latin’s dēmorārī, “to delay, hinder.” Its root, the noun mora, “delay, pause,” ultimately produces moratorium.)

The metaphor at work in this demureness implies a reservedness, a thoughtful hesitation, in its etymological “delay.” 

The adjective staid—“sedate, somber, grave”—developed along similar lines. It comes from an archaic (once but no longer in use) past participle of the verb stay, which has meant “pause” or “linger” among its many semantic stops in English. 

Demure as mix or omission?

It’s been supposed that demure is, actually, a mix of the two lines of thinking above, based in the verb demorer (“demur”) but influenced by meur (“mature”). 

There’s an additional theory that demure could come from a French phrase, such as de meure façon (“of mature manner”) or de bonnes murs (“of good manners”). 

Demure, in this case, would result from a process called ellipsis: the omission of a superfluous or contextually understood word or phrase, here façon or bonnes.

As noted above, the Old French meur—possible source of demure and rendered as mûr in French today—comes from the Latin mātūrus, source of mature in English.

Meandering about the origin of mature

The Latin mātūrus has some neat connections worthy of some attention. In Latin’s own tongue, mātūrus is believed to be related to:

• Māne, meaning “in the morning,” source of the Spanish mañana, “tomorrow”
• Mānus or mānis, “good,” with a plural mānēs that became a euphemistic way to refer to the venerated spirits of the ancient Roman dead (“the good people”)
• Mātūta, an ancient Italic goddess of ripening grain figured into the goddess of the dawn

So associated with the dawn, the name Mātūta provided the adjective mātūtīnus, “of or in the morning,” which, through French, ultimately yields matins and matinee. Not to mention matutinal, a fancy word for “early” or “relating to the morning.” 

We recently encountered the Roman goddess of the dawn under a different moniker—Aurora—in my post on aura, also inspired by viral vocabulary.

Now, something tells me matutintal won’t be trending any time soon. But hey, never count out what social media will do these days.