Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Dynamics
/daɪˈnæmɪks/noun
The study of motion under forces, or the pattern of forces at work in a group or situation.
The Greek roots
δύναμις
dýnamis
power, capacity
Literally: “the study of power”
Follow a root:δύναμις11 words
The story of the word
Leibniz built the Latin dynamica in the 1690s for his new science of force, against the Cartesian view that motion alone explained everything. Δύναμις in Greek covers power, capacity and potential, and Aristotle used it for what a thing can become as opposed to what it is. The musical sense, the loud and quiet of a performance, is nineteenth-century Italian practice given a Greek name. Nobel took the same root for dynamite in 1867.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1780s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
dynamitedynamodynastydyne
In a sentence
The dynamics of the meeting changed the moment the finance director arrived.