object [LME] Object as a noun meaning ‘a thing you can see and touch’ and as a verb meaning ‘to say that you disagree with something’ are related, both going back to the same Latin word, obicere. This meant ‘to throw at something else’. The earliest meaning in English was ‘put something in the way of something else’, and from this we get the idea of ‘oppose’. An obstacle placed in the path is something that can be seen, and this gives us the noun sense.