1635: fatigue Jun 6, 2019

Though fatigue means 'tiredness', this is not what is meant in the phrase 'military fatigues'. These both come from the same French word, but both of these nouns have very different connotations today. In French 'fatigue' has always meant 'weariness', so the continued sense of this is not surprising, but this then applied to occupational, and in particular military labors in general, and then uniforms later on in the 18th century. Interestingly, the words 'weary' and 'wear' appear to have this same relationship, especially in light of the phrases "worse for wear" and "wear and tear", but the two are not related.

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