deliberate [LME] The sense of deliberate ‘done intentionally’ is older than the closely related, but slightly differently pronounced, deliberate ‘to engage in careful consideration’. The first is medieval, the second from the mid 16th century. Both go back to a Latin word formed from libra ‘scales’, which captured the idea of weighing something up before coming to a conclusion. In the early 18th century the essayist Joseph Addison wrote that ‘When love once pleads admission to our hearts…The woman that deliberates is lost’. This is the forerunner of the modern proverb he who hesitates is lost, which is not recorded until more than 150 years later.