outlet

'Outlet' is a compound built from two Old English words: 'ut' (out) and 'laetan' (to allow, to let pass). The combination appears in Middle English around 1300, referring specifically to an opening through which water flows out of a pond, lake, or mill. The earliest recorded uses describe practical hydraulic infrastructure: sluices, drainage channels, overflow passages. Nothing in those records suggests that electricity would ever need such a word.

The word expanded through the 14th and 15th centuries. By 1400, 'outlet' described any opening that permitted escape: a gap in a fence, a postern gate in a fortified wall, a breach in an embankment. The mercantile sense, a place where goods can be sold or distributed, appears by the 17th century. 'Retail outlet' is a natural extension of the hydraulic idea: a point where a supply finds its way into the world.

The electrical sense arrived in the United States in the late 19th century, as domestic wiring became standard. The National Electrical Code used 'outlet' to mean a point in a wiring system where current could be drawn, first in the 1897 edition. The metaphor is exact: current flows through a circuit as water flows through a channel, and the outlet is where it emerges for use. The hydraulic logic survived perfectly into the new medium.

The psychological sense, an 'outlet for frustration,' appears in English writing by the early 19th century. William Hazlitt used it in 1817, describing the need for emotional release. The word moved from water to commerce to electricity to feeling, always keeping the same logic. Every sense of 'outlet' is really the same sentence: this is where pressure finds its way out.