loath
Often confused with loathe
- 1Reluctant or unwilling, and always followed by a verb phrase, such as to leave or to admit.
Many voters are loath to admit they changed their minds.
The company was loath to raise prices in the middle of a downturn.
Similarreluctant, unwilling, averse, disinclined, hesitant
Note
An adjective that never stands before a noun: it follows a verb like be and leads straight into an action with to, as in loath to leave or loath to admit it. Bunyan and Walter Scott spell it loth, and the comparative once had a place too, as in Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess (1722): loath to suspect the Count, but loather to suspect Camilla.
- 2Obsolete spelling of loathe.
Note
Older writers could spell the verb without its final -e: Andrew Gray's sermon of 1736 warns hypocrites that they shall eternally loath Christ. Today the -e is what keeps the verb apart from the "reluctant" adjective: you loathe what you hate, but are loath to do what you would rather not.
- 3Angry or hostile.
Note
One of the word's oldest meanings, now gone: its Germanic ancestor meant hostile, sad or sorry, and Old English lāð meant evil or loathsome. Feeling once ran both ways in the word, toward the hater and the hated. Modern English keeps neither this anger nor the "disgusting" meaning, only the "reluctant" sense.
Less common meaning
- 4Arousing disgust or strong dislike; unpleasant.
Note
The meaning lives on in loathsome, the word a modern writer uses for a smell or a chore that turns the stomach. Loath on its own no longer describes the thing disliked, only the person who would rather not, so a loath task in an old text is simply a hateful one.
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Origin
From Middle English lōth ("loath; averse, hateful"), from Old English lāð ("evil; loathsome") or Old Norse leiðr ("uncomfortable; tired"), from Proto-Germanic *laiþaz ("loath; hostile; sad"), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂leyt- ("to do something hateful"). It is related to German Leid ("grief, sorrow"), Dutch leed ("sad"), Danish led ("disgusting") and French laid ("ugly").