Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Biosphere
/ˈbaɪəˌsfɪr/noun
The zone of Earth occupied by living things, from ocean trench to high atmosphere.
The Greek roots
βίος
bíos
life
σφαῖρα
sphaîra
ball, sphere
Literally: “life sphere”
The story of the word
The geologist Eduard Suess coined Biosphäre in 1875, almost in passing, in a book about the origin of the Alps. Vladimir Vernadsky made it a real idea in 1926: life is not a passenger on the planet but a geological force, one that rebuilt the atmosphere and put oxygen in it. Everything alive fits into a shell a few kilometres thick, thinner in proportion to the Earth than the skin on an apple.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German → English
- First recorded
- 1875
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
biologybiographysymbiosisatmosphere
In a sentence
Bacteria have been pulled from boreholes two kilometres down, which pushes the biosphere deeper than anyone expected.