Sport & ContestGreek → English
Ectomorph
/ˈɛktəmɔrf/noun
A person of lean, narrow build who gains weight and muscle with difficulty.
The Greek roots
ἐκτός
ektós
outside, external
μορφή
morphḗ
form, shape
Literally: “outer form”
The story of the word
Sheldon took his three names from the embryo in 1940. The outermost germ layer, the ectoderm, becomes skin and nervous system, so the long thin body was tied to the nervous temperament by nothing stronger than an analogy. The link was never demonstrated, but gyms and diet books wanted three tidy labels and kept them.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1940
Same family
mesomorphendomorphmorphologyamorphous
In a sentence
He calls himself an ectomorph and eats accordingly.
Distance runners cluster at the ectomorph end without anyone selecting for it.