Earth & SkyGreek → English
Asphalt
/ˈæsfɔlt/noun
A black bituminous substance mixed with gravel to surface roads.
The Greek roots
ἄσφαλτος
ásphaltos
bitumen, mineral pitch
Literally: “the unslipping stuff”
Follow a root:ἄσφαλτος1 word
The story of the word
Greeks parsed their own word as ἀ- plus σφάλλω, to trip or throw down, giving something that will not let you fall, but that reads like an ancient guess and several scholars treat ἄσφαλτος as a loan from outside Greek. Herodotus watched Babylonians use hot bitumen as mortar in their walls. The word reached English in the fourteenth century for the pitch of the Dead Sea, which Latin geographers called Lacus Asphaltites; road surfacing is a nineteenth-century use, and the first asphalt street in America was laid in Newark in 1870.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
In a sentence
The asphalt was soft enough by noon to take a heel print.