Governor
/ˈɡʌvərnər/noun
The person in charge of a state or institution, or a device that limits an engine's speed.
The Greek roots
Literally: “steersman”
The story of the word
κυβερνήτης was the man on the steering oar, and Greek used him as its standard image for anyone running a state. Latin turned the k into a g as gubernator, French softened the b to a v, and English had governor by 1300, with gubernatorial keeping the Latin consonants alive in American usage. When Norbert Wiener needed a name in 1948 for the study of control and feedback he went back to the same Greek word for cybernetics, so every cyber- word in the language descends from a man holding a rudder.
- 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
In a sentence
The governor cuts the fuel the moment the engine passes its rated speed.
She was appointed governor of the bank in the middle of a currency crisis.