We have been familiar with the concept of privilege for as long as the English language has existed. It has been used in various forms since the dark ages, with the Oxford English dictionaries listing 131 different forms of the word. From spellings like priuilag to prewyllage, the word evolved over time, with the influence of the French cognate leading to the standardized spelling of privilege by the eighteenth century. The Latin root of the word was privilegium, which specifically referred to a “law applying to one person”. This word was formed from privus meaning “individual”, lex meaning “law”, and the noun-forming suffix -ium. Privus (the root of private) derives from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction per, meaning “forward”, while lex comes from PIE leg, meaning “to gather”.
