Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Beaker
/ˈbiːkər/noun
A straight-sided cup or, in a laboratory, a cylindrical glass vessel with a lip for pouring.
The Greek roots
βῖκος
bîkos
earthenware jar
Literally: “jar”
Follow a root:βῖκος2 words
The story of the word
English got the word from Old Norse bikarr, which came through a Late Latin bicarium, and that is usually traced back to Greek βῖκος, a jar for wine or oil. The chain is disputed at both ends, and βῖκος may itself be a loan into Greek from a Semitic language, so this is a likely ancestry rather than a proven one. Archaeologists named the Bronze Age Beaker people after their pottery, several thousand years before anyone attached the word to laboratory glass.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old Norse → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
pitcher
In a sentence
He measured out 200 ml in a beaker and set it on the hotplate.