early 14c., "black" as a heraldic color, commonly identified with sable (n.1) and in many dictionaries they form one entry, but the animal's fur is brown (though generally darker than the fur of other animals) and this might be a different word of unknown origin, or it might reflect a medieval custom (unattested) of dyeing sable black. As an adjective from late 14c. Emblematic of mourning or grief from late 14c.; by c. 1800 as "black" with reference to Africans and their descendants, often in mock dignity.
early 15c., "fur or pelt of the European sable" (Martes zibellina), from Old French sable (also martre sable "sable martin"), in reference to the carnivorous arctic mammal or its highly prized fur, borrowed in French from Germanic (compare Middle Dutch sabel, Middle Low German sabel, Middle High German zobel), ultimately from a Slavic source (compare Russian, Czech sobol, Polish soból, the name of the animal), "which itself is borrowed from an East-Asiatic language" [Klein], but Russian sources (such as Vasmer) find none of the proposed candidates satisfactory.
In reference to the animal itself in English from mid-15c. The earlier word for the fur was sabeline (c. 1200), from Old French sabeline and directly from Medieval Latin sabelinum.
"to ruin or disable deliberately and maliciously," 1912, from sabotage (n.). Related: Sabotaged; sabotaging.
1907 (from 1903 as a French word in English), "malicious damaging or destruction of an employer's property by workmen," from French sabotage, from saboter "to sabotage, bungle," literally "walk noisily," from sabot "wooden shoe" (see sabaton).
In English, "malicious mischief" would appear to be the nearest explicit definition of "sabotage," which is so much more expressive as to be likely of adoption into all languages spoken by nations suffering from this new force in industry and morals. Sabotage has a flavor which is unmistakable even to persons knowing little slang and no French .... [Century Magazine, November 1910]
In French, and at first in English, the sense of "deliberately and maliciously destroying property" was in reference to labor disputes, but the oft-repeated story (as old as the record of the word in English) that the modern meaning derives from strikers' supposed tactic of throwing shoes into machinery is not supported by the etymology. Likely it was not meant as a literal image; the word was used in French in a variety of "bungling" senses, such as "to play a piece of music badly."
This, too, was the explanation given in some early usages:
SABOTAGE [chapter heading] The title we have prefixed seems to mean "scamping work." It is a device which, we are told, has been adopted by certain French workpeople as a substitute for striking. The workman, in other words, purposes to remain on and to do his work badly, so as to annoy his employer's customers and cause loss to his employer. [The Liberty Review, January 1907]
You may believe that sabotage is murder, and so forth, but it is not so at all. Sabotage means giving back to the bosses what they give to us. Sabotage consists in going slow with the process of production when the bosses go slow with the same process in regard to wages. [Arturo M. Giovannitti, quoted in report of the Sagamore Sociological Conference, June 1907]
The military extension to damage inflicted (especially clandestinely) to disrupt an enemy is from World War I.
"one who commits sabotage," 1912 (from 1909 as a French word in English), a borrowing of the French agent noun from saboter (see sabotage (n.)). The French fem. form is saboteuse.
"Jew born in Palestine" (or, after 1948, Israel), 1945, from Modern Hebrew sabrah, literally "prickly pear."
fem. proper name, personified as a nymph by Milton in "Comus" (1634). The name is from a Welsh tale of a maiden drowned in the river Severn by her stepmother; the legend is found in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Giraldus Cambrensis. It appears to be the Romanized form of the name of the River Severn (Welsh Hafren, Habren), which is Celtic and of unknown origin; it perhaps means "boundary." Sabrina neckline is from the 1954 film "Sabrina" starring Audrey Hepburn. Sabrina-work (1871) was a millinery term for a variety of application embroidery.
"sandy, gritty," 1630s, from Latin sabulosus "sandy," from sabulum "coarse sand" (see sand (n.)). Related: Sabulosity.
central Algonquian people who lived near the upper Mississippi before the 1832 Black Hawk War, from French Canadian Saki, probably a shortened borrowing of Ojibwa (Algonquian) /osa:ki:/, literally "person of the outlet" (of the Saginaw River, which itself contains their name, and means literally "in the Sac country").
