Bleach

The other day I saw the word bleach on a shopping list. I stopped and looked at the word as if I had just seen a colorful stone on a gravel path. Where does the word bleach come from, I wondered.
 
The verb ‘to bleach’ has its origins in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root bhel-(1) (to shine, flash, burn; shining white) and Proto-Germanic blaikjan (to make white), the source of words such as Old Saxon blek, Dutch bleek, German bleich, Old Norse bleikja, and Old English blaecan (all meaning to make white by removing color, to whiten).
 
Interestingly, the words bleach and black are siblings of the PIE bhel-(1) family, “perhaps because both black and white are colorless, or because both are associated in different ways with burning” (Online Etymological Dictionary). The origins of the word black form yet another interesting word story.
 
The noun bleach first appears in the 18th century. Bleach, as a chemical bleaching agent, is from 1881. The Old English noun blaece meant leprosy, perhaps related to changes in skin color resembling the burning or whitening of the skin.
 
The next time you use bleach to perform some ordinary household task, consider that the word bleach has come to us more or less unchanged through thousands of years of ordinary household use.
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
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