Phraseology and Culture in English

9. An internal reconstruction of the semantic history of 
reasonable
Leaving aside the collocation reasonable man, which I have discussed in 
detail elsewhere (Wierzbicka in press a), let us try to identify the main 
turns in the history of the word reasonable, and to suggest how changing 
ways of thinking and speaking could have crystallized into new meanings. 
I will represent this hypothetical history in stages, while noting that in 
actual usage the meanings assigned to different stages can co-occur, and 
also, that while the meanings assigned to stages I and II are no longer in 
use, those assigned to stages III, IV, V, and VI are all richly represented in 
present-day English. Thus, the hypothetical sequence outlined below is 
meant to be, above all, logical rather than demonstrably chronological: 
certain meanings are hypothesized to have developed out of certain other 
meanings. 
Stage I
The word reasonable is used in the sense of, roughly, ‘endowed 
with reason’, as in the phrase a reasonable creature.
Stage II
The word reasonable starts to be linked not only with the abil-
ity to think, but more specifically with the ability to think well. For exam-
ple, the sentence cited by the OED (and dated 1636), “Reasonable and judi-
cious readers will not dislike the same digression”, appears to refer to 
readers who “can think well”. Locutions like it is reasonable to conclude
(as used by Locke 1690) also link the word reasonable with the ability to 
think well, and in particular, to think well about what happens to one, and 
to draw inferences from this. At that stage (seventeenth to eighteenth cen-

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Anna Wierzbicka 
tury), reasonable can be linked not only with thoughts that are hypothetical 
(assumptions, suppositions, and the like) but also with belief, conviction, 
certainty and substantial doubt. Christianity is defended as “reasonable” by 
those who wholeheartedly embrace it. At the same time, reasonable is seen 
as “compatible with reason” rather than “required by reason”. The claim is 
that someone who thinks well can think like this, not that they have to think 
like this. Thus, the ideal of ‘reason’ is felt to be consistent with both con-
viction and toleration (tolerance for other people’s convictions), and as 
inconsistent with dogmatism, absolutism, and intolerance. (This is the era 
of the British Enlightenment.)