Epicenter
/ˈɛpɪˌsɛntər/noun
The point on the earth's surface directly above where an earthquake starts.
The Greek roots
Literally: “upon the center”
The story of the word
Robert Mallet needed a name for the spot on the ground above the true origin of a quake, and used the Latin form epicentrum in his report on the Naples earthquake of 1857; the English word follows in the 1880s. The whole job of the prefix is to say not there but above there. Which is why the common figurative use, the epicenter of the crisis meaning its exact heart, reverses the technical sense: an epicenter is precisely where the thing did not happen.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1880s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The epicenter was offshore, which spared the town the worst of it.
News reports give the epicenter within minutes; the depth takes longer.