Everyday LifeGreek → English
Cosmetic
/kɒzˈmɛtɪk/adjective
Affecting only appearance, or applied to the body to improve how it looks.
The Greek roots
κοσμεῖν
kosmeîn
to order, to adorn
Literally: “skilled at arranging”
Follow a root:κοσμεῖν1 word
The story of the word
The Greeks used one root for the order of the universe and the order of a face. κόσμος is arrangement; a κοσμητής in Athens was the official who kept things in their proper places; κοσμητικός meant skilled at arranging. English took the word in the seventeenth century for what is applied to the skin, and by the nineteenth it had acquired the dismissive sense of a change that goes no deeper than the surface.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
cosmoscosmopolitanmicrocosmcosmonaut
In a sentence
The repairs were cosmetic and the wiring was still a fire risk.
She kept her cosmetics in a tin that had once held biscuits.