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Origin and history of hiding

hiding(n.1)

"concealment," early 13c., verbal noun from hide (v.1). Hiding-place is from mid-15c.; an Old English word for this was hydels.

hiding(n.2)

"a flogging," 1809, from hide (n.1), perhaps in reference to a whip or thong made of animal hide, or of "tanning" someone's "hide." Old English had hyde ðolian "to undergo a flogging," and hydgild "fine paid to save one's skin (from a punishment by flogging)." The English expression a hiding to nothing (by 1905) referred to a situation where there was disgrace in defeat and no honor in victory.

also from 1809

Entries linking to hiding

hide(v.1)

Old English hydan (transitive and intransitive) "to hide, conceal; preserve; hide oneself; bury a corpse," from West Germanic *hudjan (source also of Middle Dutch, Middle Low German huden), from suffixed form of PIE *keudh- (source also of Greek keuthein "to hide, conceal"), from root *(s)keu- "to cover, conceal."

hidy-hole(n.)

1817, altered from hiding-hole (1610s); from hiding (n.1) + hole (n.).

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    cache
    1797, "hiding place," from French Canadian trappers' slang, "hiding place for stores and provisions" (1660s), a back-formation...The sense was extended by 1830s to "anything stored in a hiding place."...
    holster
    "leather case for a pistol," 1660s, probably from Old English heolster, earlier helustr "concealment, hiding place," from...
    paper
    Verbal phrase paper over in the figurative sense is from 1955, probably from the notion of hiding cracks in plaster with...
    refuge
    "shelter or protection from danger, assistance in distress," late 14c., from Old French refuge "hiding place" (12c.), from...
    hunky-dory
    games, from Dutch honk "post, station, home," in children's play, "base, goal," from Middle Dutch honc "place of refuge, hiding...
    cobbler
    As soon as the man was out of sight Apelles came from his hiding-place, examined the painting, found that the cobbler's criticism...This was too much for the patience of the artist, who rushed from his hiding place and told the cobbler to stick to his shoes...
    ambuscade
    after it had been Italianized: Ambuscade is from French embuscade (16c.), Gallicized from Italian imboscata, literally "a hiding...
    skulk
    "go or move furtively; withdrawn into a close, secure place for concealment," c. 1300 (late 13c. as a surname), skulken, from a Scandinavian source such as Norwegian skulke "to shirk, malinger," Danish skulke "to spare oneself, shirk," Swedish skolka "to shirk, skulk, slink, play
    obscure
    c. 1400, "dark," figuratively "morally unenlightened; gloomy," from Old French obscur, oscur "dark, clouded, gloomy; dim, not clear" (12c.) and directly from Latin obscurus "dark, dusky, shady," figuratively "unknown; unintelligible; hard to discern; from insignificant ancestors,
    obstruct
    1610s, "to block or stop up with obstacles or impediments," a back-formation from obstruction or else from Latin obstructus, past participle of obstruere "build up, block, block up, build against, stop, bar, hinder," from ob "in front of, in the way of" (see ob-) + struere "to pi

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