Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Cytoplasm
/ˈsaɪtəˌplæzəm/noun
The jelly-like material filling a cell outside the nucleus.
The Greek roots
κύτος
kýtos
hollow vessel
πλάσμα
plásma
something moulded
Literally: “the moulded stuff inside the vessel”
The story of the word
κύτος is a hollow container, a jar or the hull of a ship. Nineteenth-century biologists pressed it into service as the combining form for cell because Latin cella, Hooke's word from 1665, was already carrying that job in English. πλάσμα is anything shaped by hand, from πλάσσω, to mould, which also gives plastic. German histologists fixed the word in the 1860s and 1870s, with Kölliker's usage the one most often cited.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
cytologyleucocyteprotoplasmplastic
In a sentence
Most of the cell's machinery floats in the cytoplasm, not the nucleus.
The dye stains the cytoplasm blue and leaves the nucleus clear.