Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Entomology
/ˌɛntəˈmɑːlədʒi/noun
The scientific study of insects.
The Greek roots
ἔντομον
éntomon
insect, notched creature
λόγος
lógos
study, account
Literally: “study of the notched ones”
The story of the word
ἔντομον means cut into, named for the nipped waist between an insect's segments, and Aristotle used τὰ ἔντομα as his term for the whole group. When Latin needed a word it translated the Greek morpheme by morpheme into insectum, also cut into. So insect and entomology are the same observation made twice in two languages, and neither of them mentions legs, wings or antennae.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1760s
Same family
entomologistatomanatomytome
In a sentence
He went into entomology because of a beetle he found at eight years old.
Forensic entomology can date a body from which flies arrived.