Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Automobile
/ˈɔːtəməbiːl/noun
A road vehicle that carries a few passengers and runs on its own engine.
The Greek roots
αὐτός
autós
self, same
Literally: “self-moving”
Follow a root:αὐτός13 words
The story of the word
Half Greek, half Latin, and the purists complained: αὐτός welded onto Latin mobilis. French used automobile as an adjective for self-propelled machinery from the 1860s and as a noun by 1890; American English took the noun, then largely gave it up for car. The Greeks who had αὐτός also had αὐτόματος, acting of itself, which Homer uses of the gates of heaven swinging open with nobody touching them.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek + Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 1890s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
automaticautonomyautopsyauthentic
In a sentence
The automobile reshaped American cities within thirty years.
He collects automobile advertisements from the 1950s.