class [M16th] The Latin classis had a wide range of meanings including the social divisions of citizens by wealth, a more formal version of our social classes [E16th]; division, giving our sense of a set or category [L16th]; army and fleet. It had the underlying idea of ‘a summons, call’. The class of students appeared in the mid 16th century. Classified [L18th] was originally a neutral word describing how things were organized in classes or categories, and the sense ‘secret’ did not appear until the 1940s. Classy developed from the sense of ‘high-class’ around 1870. Classic [L16th] and classical [M16th] came into English via French from the Latin adjective classicus based on classis, which had the senses of ‘of the highest class’ and ‘excellent’, although the earliest sense of both in English was ‘relating to Greek and Roman antiquity’.