Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Govern
/ˈɡʌvərn/verb
To direct the affairs of a state, organisation or system.
The Greek roots
κυβερνάω
kybernáō
to steer a ship
Literally: “to steer”
Follow a root:κυβερνάω1 word
The story of the word
The oldest sense is nautical and physical: a hand on the steering oar. Latin took the verb as gubernare, French wore it down to governer, and English had it by about 1300 with the sea long forgotten. The Latin b survives in "gubernatorial", and the Greek original resurfaced untouched in 1948 when Norbert Wiener named cybernetics, so a governor and a cyborg descend from the same steersman.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1300
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
governmentgovernorgubernatorialcybernetics
In a sentence
No party had the seats to govern alone, so the talks dragged into a third week.