Sport & ContestGreek → English
Cyclist
/ˈsaɪklɪst/noun
Someone who rides a bicycle.
The Greek roots
κύκλος
kýklos
circle, wheel
Literally: “wheel-person”
Follow a root:κύκλος14 words
The story of the word
The word had rivals. Bicyclist, cycler, wheelman and velocipedist all competed through the 1870s and 1880s, and the cycling press argued the case in its letters pages before cyclist won. Κύκλος is the wheel itself, and the ending is Greek too, the -ιστής that Europe adopted for its doers, so nothing in the word is English except the decision to join the two parts.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 1880s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
bicyclecyclecycloneencyclopedia
In a sentence
Two cyclists came past the queue of traffic without slowing down.