Art & MusicGreek → English
Cinema
/ˈsɪnəmə/noun
Film as an art form, or the building where films are shown.
The Greek roots
κίνημα
kínēma
movement, motion
γράφειν
gráphein
to write, record
Literally: “movement-writing”
The story of the word
The Lumière brothers patented the Cinématographe in 1895 and the long word was clipped almost at once, to cinéma in France and cinema in Britain, while America shortened the rival kinetoscope family into "movies". Greek κίνημα is an everyday word for a motion or a stirring, and in modern Greek it also means a political movement. English kept the hard k of the root in kinetic and the soft c in cinema, from the same source.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1899
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
kinetickinesiologytelekinesiscinematography
In a sentence
The old cinema on the corner is a furniture shop now.
He writes about Greek cinema of the 1970s.