rebus

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*reh₁ís“goods; wealth”
2. Latin · derived fromrēbus
3. French · derived fromrébus“rebus (puzzle); ambiguity; word used in an oblique sense; unintelligible remark”
4. English todayrebus

From French rébus (“rebus (puzzle); ambiguity; word used in an oblique sense; unintelligible remark”), or directly from its probable etymon Latin rēbus, the ablative plural of rēs (“object, stuff, thing; issue, matter, subject, topic”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *reh₁ís (“goods; wealth”). The connection between the English word and its Latin etymon is unclear. further etymology The following possibilities have been suggested, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary are problematic: * According to the French scholar Gilles Ménage (1613–1692) in Les origines de la langue françoise (The Origins of the French Language, 1650), it is taken from the phrase de rebus quae geruntur (“concerning the things that are taking place”) which was used in 16th-century Picardy as the name for satirical writings on contemporary subjects containing picture-riddles that were composed for an annual carnival. However, the term rebus de Picardie is first attested later than the word rébus, and so could simply refer to rebuses popular in Picardy at the time. * Alternatively, it could be from the phrase nōn verbīs sed rēbus meaning “not by words but by things”, but this “encounters difficulties in the chronology of the senses in French”.

Words from the same roots