Etymology: < French risque danger or inconvenience, predictable or otherwise (1578 in Middle French as a feminine noun, 1633 as a masculine noun; 1690 as a legal term) < Italian †risco (first half of the 14th cent.), variant of rischio (a1292; 13th cent. as †reisego ), risico (1367), both in sense ‘possibility of harm, an unpleasant consequence, etc.’, apparently < post-classical Latin resicum , risicum (both mid 12th cent. in Italian sources; also mid 12th cent. in a document from Constantinople), risigum , resigum , resegum (1227–8 in Occitanian sources), rischium , rischum , riscum , risecum (second half of the 13th cent. in Italian sources), all in commercial contexts in sense ‘hazard, danger’; further etymology uncertain and disputed. Compare risco n., risgoe n.Compare Middle French (Walloon) resicq , risicq possibility of damage to or loss of merchandise (second half of the 15th cent.), Old Occitan rezegue possibility of damage to merchandise when transported by sea (1200; 1301 as reseque ), Catalan risc , †reec danger, risk, possibility of damage to merchandise when transported by sea (13th cent.), Spanish riesgo conflict, disagreement (c1300), possibility of harm or unpleasant consequences (16th cent.), Portuguese risco (15th cent.). Compare also Dutch risico (1525; < Italian) and †resicq (1563), † risicque (1602), both recorded in the Spanish Netherlands in the sense ‘possibility of damage to merchandise’ (compare Middle French (Walloon) resicq , risicq : see above), German Risiko (1507; < Italian), and also post-classical Latin rixicum (1458 in a British source). Compare also medieval Greek ῥίζικον risk (c1160). It is widely suggested that post-classical Latin resicum , risicum , etc. in the sense ‘danger, hazard’ originated as variants of an unattested post-classical Latin noun *resecum , a proposed derivative of classical Latin resecāre resect v. with the sense ‘that which cuts’ and hence ‘rock, crag, reef’ (compare Spanish risco in this sense from the 13th cent.), with allusion to the hazards of travel or transport by sea (for further details see e.g. J. Corominas Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (1981) at riesgo). Although this argument fits with the maritime context of many early uses of the word in English and the Romance languages, it involves a number of steps which are unsupported by documentary evidence. It has also been argued that post-classical Latin resicum , risicum , etc. is derived < the specific senses ‘fortune, luck, destiny, chance’ of Arabic rizq (in Maghribi Arabic also rēzq ), which has a number of senses: ‘provision, lot, portion allotted by God to each man’, ‘livelihood, sustenance’, hence ‘boon, blessing (given by God)’, ‘property, wealth’, ‘income, wages’, and finally ‘fortune, luck, destiny, chance’ (a sense development widespread in many Arabic dialects, reflected in Maltese risq ‘fortune, luck’, and also in the early use of post-classical Latin resicum , risicum in collocation with fortūna fortune n.). The original sense of this Arabic noun was probably ‘a thing from which a person profits or derives advantage’. It is a borrowing < Middle Persian rōzīk ‘daily provision, daily sustenance’, with subsequent semantic development within Arabic. Both the above explanations assume that medieval Greek ῥίζικον was borrowed from post-classical Latin risicum , but it is also possible that the borrowing went the other way: both words are first attested at about the same time. In this case it would be necessary to explain the origin of the Greek word. Suggestions include derivation from ancient Greek ῥίζα root (see rhizo- comb. form), from Hellenistic Greek ῥῦσις deliverance (Septuagint), and from Arabic rizq. The case for the latter suggestion may be strengthened by the early attestation of medieval Greek ῥουζικόν ‘food tax, food allowance for Arab troops, grain supply’ alongside Arabic rizq in late 7th- and early 8th-cent. bilingual Arabic–Greek papyri from Egypt; here ῥουζικόν is clearly a borrowing of the Arabic noun (probably with alteration after its Persian ulterior etymon). For details of the medieval evidence for this word and a summary of modern scholarship on its etymology, see further S. Piron L'apparition du ‘resicum’ en Méditerranée occidentale in Pour une histoire culturelle du risque (2004) 59–76. Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. (at risk n., v.) records also forms rest, rist in 20th-cent. use in the Appalachians, but it is unclear whether as noun or verb (or both) or in which sense.

Etymology: Partly < risk n., and partly < French risquer to expose (someone or something) to a chance (1577 in Middle French), to put (something or someone) in danger of harm or loss (1604), either < risque risk n. (although first attested slightly earlier), or < Italian rischiare (a1348; compare risicare 1598) < rischio risk n.