Everyday LifeGreek → English
Disk
/dɪsk/noun
A flat thin circular object.
The Greek roots
δίσκος
dískos
quoit, thrown plate
Literally: “thing thrown”
Follow a root:δίσκος9 words
The story of the word
Δίσκος comes from δικεῖν, to throw, so the first disk was named for what you did with it rather than for its shape. Latin took it as discus, and English then borrowed that single Latin word four separate times across a thousand years: as dish, as dais, as desk, and finally, in the 1660s, as disk. The disk and disc spellings later split by convention, magnetic media taking one and optical media the other.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1660s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
discusdishdeskdaisdiscotheque
In a sentence
The hard disk had been clicking for a week before it died.
A slipped disk kept him flat on the floor for a month.