Sport & ContestGreek → English
Discus
/ˈdɪskəs/noun
A heavy circular plate thrown for distance in a track and field event.
The Greek roots
δίσκος
dískos
quoit, disc
Literally: “thing thrown”
Follow a root:δίσκος9 words
The story of the word
δίσκος comes from δικεῖν, to throw, so the object is named for what you do with it rather than for its shape. The ancient discus was stone or bronze, heavier than the modern one and far less standardised, which makes recorded distances hard to compare. Myron's Discobolus froze the throw in the fifth century BC. Through Latin the same word splits in English into disk, dish, desk and dais, four things that were all once flat and round.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1650s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
discdishdeskdais
In a sentence
He threw the discus into the netting twice and then apologised to the netting.