aborigine n.

word-forming element meaning "away, from, from off, down," denoting disjunction, separation, departure; from Latin ab (prep.) "off, away from" in reference to space or distance, also of time, from PIE root *apo- "off, away" (also the source of Greek apo "off, away from, from," Sanskrit apa "away from," Gothic af, English of, off; see apo-).

The Latin word also denoted "agency by; source, origin; relation to, in consequence of." Since classical times usually reduced to a- before -m-, -p-, or -v-; typically abs- before -c-, -q-, or -t-.

c. 1400, "ancestry, race," from Latin originem (nominative origo) "a rise, commencement, beginning, source; descent, lineage, birth," from stem of oriri "arise, rise, get up; appear above the horizon, become visible; be born, be descended, receive life;" figuratively "come forth, take origin, proceed, start" (of rivers, rumors, etc.), from PIE *heri- "to rise" (source also of Hittite arai- "to arise, lift, raise," Sanskrit iyarti "to set in motion, move," Armenian y-arnem "to rise"). Meaning "beginning of existence" is from 1560s; sense of "that from which something derives its being or nature" is from c. 1600.

1660s, "first, earliest, existing from the beginning," especially in reference to inhabitants of lands colonized by Europeans, from aborigines (see aborigine) + -al (1). The specific Australian sense is attested from 1820. The noun meaning "an original inhabitant, an autochthon" is attested from 1760. Related: Aboriginally; aboriginality (1848); aboriginalism (1859).