Earth & SkyGreek → English
Crater
/ˈkreɪtər/noun
A bowl-shaped hollow at a volcano's mouth or where a meteorite has struck.
The Greek roots
κρατήρ
kratḗr
mixing bowl
Literally: “mixing bowl”
Follow a root:κρατήρ2 words
The story of the word
At a Greek symposium the wine was mixed with water in a wide two-handled κρατήρ before anyone drank; taking it neat was what barbarians did. The verb behind the noun, κεράννυμι, means simply to mix. Naturalists borrowed the shape for volcano mouths in the seventeenth century, and astronomers later carried it to the Moon, where Galileo had seen the hollows but had no name for them.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
idiosyncrasycrasis
In a sentence
Steam was still coming off the floor of the crater at dawn.