Earth & SkyGreek → English
Anomaly
/əˈnɒməli/noun
Something that departs from the rule, the pattern or the expected value.
The Greek roots
ἀν-
an-
not, un-
ὁμαλός
homalós
even, level
Literally: “unevenness”
The story of the word
The an- is not a negative stuck in front of a Latin word for law, which is the usual guess. It is ἀνώμαλος, un-even, from ὁμαλός, level; ἀνωμαλία meant roughness of a surface or irregularity of behaviour. Astronomy kept the geometric flavour, where a planet's anomaly is simply its angle measured from perihelion, with nothing irregular implied.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
anomaloushomologoushomogeneous
In a sentence
The survey picked up a magnetic anomaly running under the field.
One warm February is weather; a decade of them is an anomaly worth explaining.