Earth & SkyGreek → English
Cosmodrome
/ˈkɒzmədroʊm/noun
A spacecraft launch site, especially one of the Soviet or Russian facilities.
The Greek roots
κόσμος
kósmos
world, universe
δρόμος
drómos
running track, course
Literally: “universe racecourse”
The story of the word
A Russian word, космодром, built on the pattern of аэродром and carried into English by news reports rather than by scientists. The second half is the δρόμος that named the running track in a Greek stadium and gave English the hippodrome, a course for horses. Baikonur, leased from Kazakhstan since 1994, is still the only ground a Soyuz crew leaves Earth from.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Russian coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
hippodromepalindromeaerodromecosmossyndrome
In a sentence
The crew flew out to the cosmodrome two weeks before the window opened.