Everyday LifeGreek → English
Eureka
/jʊˈriːkə/interjection
A cry of triumph at a sudden discovery or solution.
The Greek roots
εὕρηκα
heúrēka
I have found it
Literally: “I have found it”
Follow a root:εὕρηκα1 word
The story of the word
It is a perfect tense, so the sense is not I find but I have found and the finding is done. Vitruvius tells the bath story about Archimedes two centuries after the fact, and no contemporary source mentions it, which is roughly the evidential standing of Newton's apple. California put the word on its state seal in 1849, meaning the gold, and it is still the state motto.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
In a sentence
He sat back from the screen and said eureka, entirely deadpan.
The eureka moment came three weeks after everyone had stopped expecting one.