Other forms: controls
Control is power over how something behaves. Lose control, in control, under control.
It covers machines, situations and feelings alike — remote control, birth control, self-control. In science, a control is the group in an experiment that gets no treatment, which is what makes the comparison mean anything. Note controlled, controlling; out of control; and that control comes from a counter-roll, the second copy of a register kept to check the first, which is where the checking sense comes from.
1nouncontrolPower over how something behaves.~86%
“The driver lost control of the car on the icy road.”
2noununtreatedThe untreated group in an experiment.~14%
“Half the patients got the new drug, while the control group got sugar pills.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
control is power over something.
Medieval Latin contrarotulus was a counter-roll, a duplicate register used to verify accounts. To control was to check against that copy, and the sense of power came later.
Latin
contrā — against, opposite
Medieval Latin
contrārotulus — a counter-roll or register used to verify accounts
Old French
contrerole
Middle English
controllen
English, today
control
Built from
From Middle English controllen, from Old French contrerole, from Medieval Latin contrārotulus (“a counter-roll or register used to verify accounts”), from Latin contrā (“against, opposite”) + Medieval Latin rotulus, Latin rotula (“roll, a little wheel”), diminutive of rota (“a wheel”). Partly displaced native wealdan and wieldan, whence their merged reflex wield.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA