Origins
The verb 'compose' entered English around 1420 from Old French 'composer,' meaning 'to arrange, to put together, to write.' The Old French word is a Romance formation that ultimately draws on Latin 'compōnere,' a compound of the prefix 'com-' (together, with) and 'pōnere' (to put, to place). The past participle of 'compōnere' is 'compositum,' which gave English the related words 'composite' and 'composition.' The Latin verb 'pōnere' and its past participle 'positum' are the ancestors of an enormous English word family including 'position,' 'deposit,' 'dispose,' 'expose,' 'impose,' 'oppose,' 'propose,' 'suppose,' and 'depose.'
The etymology of 'pōnere' itself has been debated by scholars. The traditional view connects it to an older form *po-sinere (to place away), related to the PIE root *apo- (off, away). The past participle 'positum' appears to come from a different, suppletive stem, possibly connected to the PIE root *tkei- (to settle, to dwell) via an unattested Italic intermediate. This suppletive relationship — where a verb's present and past stems come from different roots — is paralleled in English by pairs like 'go/went.'
The Old French form 'composer' also shows the influence of Latin 'pausāre' (to cease, to rest), which in Vulgar Latin had become partially conflated with 'pōnere.' This is why the French verb has '-poser' rather than the '-poner' one might expect from Latin 'pōnere' directly. This blend of 'pōnere' and 'pausāre' runs through the entire '-pose' family in English: compose, dispose, expose, impose, oppose, propose, suppose, and depose all show this French intermediary form rather than a direct Latin borrowing.
Literary History
When 'compose' first appeared in English, its primary meaning was 'to put together, to construct, to create by combining elements.' The application to literary and artistic creation — composing a poem, a letter, a treatise — was immediate, since writing was understood as an act of arranging words and ideas. The specific musical sense, in which a composer creates a piece of music by arranging notes and harmonies, emerged in the sixteenth century as the art of musical notation became more formalized.
The reflexive sense 'to compose oneself' — meaning to calm down, to achieve a state of inner arrangement and order — appeared in the seventeenth century. This metaphorical extension treats emotional turmoil as a kind of disorder that can be resolved by 'putting things back together.' The related noun 'composure' (from about 1600) captures this sense of emotional arrangement and self-possession.
The printing sense of 'compose' — arranging movable type for printing — dates from the sixteenth century and was central to the vocabulary of the publishing trade for centuries. A 'compositor' was the skilled craftsman who assembled individual letters into lines and pages. This usage persisted into the twentieth century and is remembered in terms like 'typesetting composition.'
French Influence
The word 'compost,' which entered English in the fourteenth century, is an unexpected relative. It comes from the same Latin 'compositum' (something put together), via Old French 'composte.' The idea is that compost is a 'composition' — organic materials put together in a heap to decompose. The semantic distance between a Beethoven composition and a garden compost heap belies their shared etymological origin.
Phonologically, 'compose' shows the standard English stress pattern for two-syllable verbs of French origin, with stress on the second syllable: /kəmˈpoʊz/. The noun 'composite' shifts stress to the first syllable, following the English pattern of distinguishing verbs from nouns or adjectives through stress placement.