Number & MeasureGreek → English
Dodecagon
/doʊˈdɛkəɡɒn/noun
A flat figure with twelve straight sides.
The Greek roots
δώδεκα
dṓdeka
twelve
γωνία
gōnía
angle, corner
Literally: “twelve angles”
The story of the word
Δώδεκα is δύο and δέκα stuck together, two-and-ten, the same way the Greeks counted the Olympian gods and the islands of the Dodecanese. Plato gave the dodecahedron, the twelve-faced solid, to the cosmos itself in the Timaeus. The flat twelve-cornered version turns up in coin design because a dodecagon rolls badly and is easy to identify by touch.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
dodecahedrondecagonpolygonDodecanese
In a sentence
The threepenny bit was a dodecagon, which made it easy to find in a pocket.