Sport & ContestGreek → English
Ergometer
/ɜrˈɡɑmɪtər/noun
A machine that measures the mechanical work a person produces while exercising.
The Greek roots
ἔργον
érgon
work, deed
μέτρον
métron
measure
Literally: “work measure”
The story of the word
The word was doing engineering duty by the 1870s, on instruments that measured the work a machine put out, before physiologists turned it on the human body. The rowing ergometer lets a crew race indoors on a flywheel, and Olympic selection now partly rests on times set in a shed; the cycle ergometer does the same job in a cardiology lab, where the load is raised in steps until something on the trace changes. The erg itself, one dyne-centimetre, was named from the same ἔργον in 1873.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
ergenergyergonomicsmetronome
In a sentence
Two thousand metres on the ergometer tells a coach more about a rower than a week on the water.