Everyday LifeGreek → English
Chest
/tʃɛst/noun
A large strong box with a lid, and, since the sixteenth century, the front of the upper body.
The Greek roots
κίστη
kístē
box, basket
Literally: “box”
Follow a root:κίστη1 word
The story of the word
This is one of the oldest Greek words in English. Latin borrowed κίστη as cista, and Old English took it as cest well before the Conquest, arriving with the object itself and with the Latin-speaking church. The body sense is a metaphor from the container, the ribs as a case for heart and lungs, and it shows up only from the 1520s; cistern is a relative, and so is the cist, the stone box grave archaeologists dig up.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cisterncist
In a sentence
The chest had been nailed shut and no key came with it.
He complained of a tightness in the chest.