Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Entropy
/ˈɛntrəpi/noun
A measure of how much of a system's energy is unavailable for work, and of disorder generally.
The Greek roots
ἐν
en
in, within
τροπή
tropḗ
a turning
Literally: “a turning within”
The story of the word
Rudolf Clausius assembled the word in 1865 and said outright that he wanted it to sound like Energie so the two terms would travel as a pair. Greek ἐντροπία already existed, but it meant a turning about, or shame, with no connection to heat. Shannon borrowed the name for information theory in 1948, on advice usually credited to von Neumann.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → German → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
enthalpyheliotropetrophytropic
In a sentence
Left alone, the flat reached maximum entropy by Thursday.