![]() ![]() In Latin, that word’s original meaning was “state of being” or “condition.” Interestingly, even though “clothing” is the oldest meaning of habit in English, it wasn’t the original meaning of the word's ultimate Latin root, habitus. The specific development of habit to refer to drug addiction began in the 19th century, with reference to opium. In English, habit progressed from meaning “clothing” to “clothing for a particular profession or purpose” to “bearing, conduct, behavior." (The word’s evolution brings to mind the old adage “the clothes make the man," which asserts that the way we dress reflects our character.)įrom “what one wears” to “how one conducts oneself,” habit continued to evolve, referring to appearance (“a man of fleshy habit”) and mental makeup (“a philosophical habit”) before, after several centuries in English, it came to mean repeated activity: “a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition.” Indeed, the modern French word for clothes is habits (pronounced \ah-bee\). Like so many words that appeared in English in the centuries following the Norman Conquest, habit came from French. Today, this meaning is preserved only in phrases like "nun's habit," "monk's habit," and "riding habit" (clothes worn for horseback riding). In its oldest sense, however, habit meant "clothing" and had nothing to do with the things a person does in a regular and repeated way. The word habit most often refers to a usual way of behaving or a tendency that someone has settled into, as in "good eating habits."
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