Earth & SkyGreek → English
Ether
/ˈiːθər/noun
The invisible medium once thought to fill space and carry light, and separately a volatile liquid once used as an anaesthetic.
The Greek roots
αἰθήρ
aithḗr
upper air, bright sky
αἴθειν
aíthein
to burn, blaze
Literally: “the blazing upper air”
The story of the word
For the Greeks αἰθήρ was the clear burning air above the clouds, what the gods breathed, sharply distinct from ἀήρ, the murky stuff down here. Aristotle made it a fifth element, the unchanging substance of the heavens. Physics kept the word for the medium supposed to carry light waves until Michelson and Morley failed to detect any trace of it in 1887, and the anaesthetic took the name separately, for its volatility.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
etherealethylEthernet
In a sentence
Nineteenth-century physicists spent decades measuring a wind through the ether that was not there.