welcome

Meanings

Adjective

• Whose arrival is a cause of joy; received with gladness; admitted willingly to the house, entertainment, or company.
• Producing gladness.
• Free to have or enjoy gratuitously.

Noun

• The act of greeting someone’s arrival, especially by saying "Welcome!"; reception.
• The utterance of such a greeting.
• Kind reception of a guest or newcomer.
• The state of being a welcome guest.

Verb

• To affirm or greet the arrival of someone, especially by saying "Welcome!".
• To accept something willingly or gladly.

Origin

• , from Proto-Germanic *wiljakumô ("a comer, a wished-for guest"), equivalent to will + come. The component wil- was replaced by wel- when the sense “guest” of the second component was no longer understood, possibly under the influence of bienvenu. Cognate with Scots walcome, West Frisian wolkom, Dutch welkom (earlier willecome), German willkommen, German Low German willkamen, Danish velkommen, Norwegian Bokmål velkommen, Norwegian Nynorsk velkomen, velkommen, Swedish välkommen, Icelandic velkomin, Faroese vælkomin.
• Similar constructions are common in Romance languages, such as Italian benvenuto, Spanish bienvenido, French bienvenu, Catalan benvingut, Portuguese bem-vindo and Romanian bun venit, each meaning “[may you have fared] well [in] coming [here]”. These do not derive from Classic Latin, where a similar construction is not found, and presumably are instead the result of a calque from, considering the ruling elite of the barbarian kingdoms which succeeded the Western Roman Empire, a Germanic language to Proto-Romance (Vulgar Latin; see Latin *bene venūtus, and compare *perdono for similar historical phenomenon).