Words & WritingGreek → English
Epitome
/ɪˈpɪtəmi/noun
A perfect example of a quality or type, or an abridged version of a longer text.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon, into
τέμνω
témnō
I cut
Literally: “a cutting short”
The story of the word
An ἐπιτομή was a boiled-down version of a long book, and a great deal of ancient history survives only in that form, the original lost and the summary copied on. English borrowed the abridgement sense in the 1520s and then let it drift: a word meaning cut short now means complete and entire, the thing that sums up its whole class. The same verb sits inside atom, the thing that cannot be cut.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1520s
Same family
atomanatomytomeappendectomy
In a sentence
The hotel is the epitome of somewhere that photographs better than it sleeps.
He was, his students agreed, the epitome of patience.