Sport & ContestGreek → English
Cardio
/ˈkɑːrdioʊ/noun
Exercise held long enough at a raised heart rate to train the heart and lungs.
The Greek roots
καρδία
kardía
heart
Literally: “heart”
Follow a root:καρδία9 words
The story of the word
The gym word is a clipping of cardiovascular, itself Greek bolted to Latin. Kardía covered more than the pump: it was the seat of feeling and also the mouth of the stomach, which is why heartburn has nothing to do with the heart and why anatomists still call that opening the cardia. Doctors kept the long form. Everyone else took the first two syllables.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cardiaccardiologymyocardiumtachycardia
In a sentence
He lifts on Tuesdays and does cardio on Thursdays, and complains about both.