Art & MusicGreek → English
Disco
/ˈdɪskoʊ/noun
A club where people dance to recorded music, and the dance music of the 1970s that came out of those clubs.
The Greek roots
δίσκος
dískos
disc
θήκη
thḗkē
case, container
Literally: “record case”
The story of the word
French discothèque was built on the model of bibliothèque, a book-case, to mean a record library, and by the 1940s it named a Paris bar that played records instead of hiring a band. English clipped it to disco in the 1960s and moved the word onto the music itself around 1974. Both halves are Greek: the δίσκος that also gives dish and desk, and the θήκη hiding inside apothecary and, by a longer route through Provençal, inside boutique.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 1960s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
discothequeapothecaryboutiquedisk
In a sentence
Her parents met at a disco above a chip shop in 1977.