Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Government
/ˈɡʌvərnmənt/noun
The body that rules a state, or the act of ruling it.
The Greek roots
κυβερνᾶν
kybernân
to steer a ship
Literally: “steering”
Follow a root:κυβερνᾶν1 word
The story of the word
Every ship of state metaphor is a fossil of this verb: κυβερνᾶν is what a helmsman does, and Latin took it as gubernare before French wore the b down to a v. The b survives in English only in gubernatorial, which is why American governors sound Latin at election time. Norbert Wiener went back to the same Greek in 1948 for cybernetics, the science of steering and control, and every cyber- word since has been built on a helmsman.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
governorgubernatorialcyberneticscyberspace
In a sentence
The government fell on a Thursday and nobody in the village noticed until Friday.