When the verb precipate was initially introduced into the English language in 1528, it originally meant “to throw someone into a condition”. This word is derived from the past participle of the Latin praecipitare, which translates to “to throw headfirst”. The original sense of something suddenly happening or changing state evolved into the definition of “to deposit in a solution” in the 1620s. Eventually, this term was expanded to a meteorological context in the mid-nineteenth century. The noun form first appeared in the 1560s, with the adjective meaning “hasty” originating around 1600. The Latin word praecipitare is a combination of the prefix prae-, meaning “before” (from Proto-Indo-European per, also “before”), and the root caput, meaning “head” (from Proto-Indo-European kaput, also “head”). This etymology illustrates how the term was used to describe the action of diving headfirst into something.
