Number & MeasureGreek → English
Dodecahedron
/ˌdoʊdɛkəˈhiːdrən/noun
A solid bounded by twelve regular pentagons.
The Greek roots
δώδεκα
dṓdeka
twelve
ἕδρα
hédra
seat, base
Literally: “twelve seats”
The story of the word
Plato had four elements and five regular solids, so the dodecahedron was left over. In the Timaeus he says the god used it for the whole, the pattern of the heavens, which is a graceful way of admitting a spare part. Roman bronze dodecahedra with holes of different sizes keep being dug up across northwest Europe and nobody has ever established what they were for. English has the word from the 1560s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1560s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
octahedronicosahedronpolyhedroncathedral
In a sentence
The twelve-sided die is a dodecahedron, one face per month.
He glued a dodecahedron out of card and hung it over the cot.