In ancient Rome they used the word “vilis” to mean worthless or cheap. In the mid 1200s the word, which had become part of Old French, entered English (Middle English at the time) as “vile.” In English it came to mean worse than just lack of economic value; it acquired a moral aspect and tended to be applied to people’s actions and even their character. The oldest citations of “vile” (or “vil” or “vyle”) that’s still comprehensible to modern English speakers is probably from Piers Plowman, around 1393: “So vengeaunce fel vpon hem, for her vyle synnes.”
“Vile” wasn’t just applied to what people did or what they were like; it could be applied to what you wore (“vyle rayment”), bad conditions (“Many thousandes of men..lead away in so myserable and vyle captiuitie”) [that last word is “captivity”], and it even described animals that were dangerous or destructive (“The howlet wylest in wyce Raikit vnder ye rys”). That last bit seems to be about “vile howling” making a racket that hurts your ears.
The original Latin meaning of “vilis” survived in the English “vile” as well; Isaac Barrow used it that way in 1697: “The vilest and commonest stones.” The title of Barrow’s book is quite long; in the 1600s book titles could go on for pages. It starts out “A brief exposition…,” and if the rest of the title is any guide to the book itself, it was false advertising in the extreme.
“Vile” didn’t just sit on its dangerous, destructive haunches in English; it spawned a number of other words, from “villain” to “vilify” to “vilipend,” which has faded out of general usage in the past few centuries. “Vilipend” is constructed from “vile” and “pendere” which means to consider or estimate. It means to consider someone and decide they’re wanting in some way defined by “vile” — either they’re worthless, mean, nasty, or something similarly unpleasant.
One reason “vilipend” has been forgotten is probably that it’s almost identical in meaning and usage to “vilify,” and “vilify” is a bit easier to say. In Waverly, written by Sir Walter Scott in 1814, you could substitute “vilify” for “vilipend” and this passage would still have the same meaning: “He became a gay visitor, and such a reveller, that in process of time he was observed to vilipend the modest fare which had at first been esteemed a banquet by his hungry appetite, and thereby highly displeased my wife.”
There was another form of “vilipend:” “vilipenditory.” This one is obsolete too, but nevertheless it seems like a good word to haul out when you want to point out that someone is being a bit too reproachful, and their depreciant, denigratory comments might be disadvantageous to the object of their contumelious remarks. I mean, you would mention something like that, wouldn’t you?
