Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Endoscope
/ˈɛndəskoʊp/noun
A slender instrument passed into the body so a doctor can see inside it.
The Greek roots
ἔνδον
éndon
within, inside
σκοπεῖν
skopeîn
to look at, examine
Literally: “inside looker”
The story of the word
Antonin Desormeaux rigged a lamp, a lens and an angled mirror to a tube in the 1850s and gave surgery its word for looking into a living patient. The rigid tube stayed rigid for a century until fibre optics let the thing bend. σκοπεῖν is looking with intent, and it turns up in unexpected company: an ἐπίσκοπος was an overseer, which through Old English becomes bishop.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
telescopemicroscopeendocrinebishop
In a sentence
The endoscope found the bleed in under ten minutes.
Cleaning an endoscope properly takes longer than using one.