Sport & ContestGreek → English
Kinesiology
/kɪˌnisiˈɑlədʒi/noun
The scientific study of human movement and the muscles that produce it.
The Greek roots
κίνησις
kínēsis
movement, change
λόγος
lógos
study, account
Literally: “study of movement”
The story of the word
Aristotle's κίνησις was far wider than the modern word: it covered any change at all, growth and ripening included, and his account of it fills books of the Physics. The discipline that took the name in the nineteenth century narrowed it to bones, joints and muscle. Cinema comes from the same verb κινέω through the French cinématographe, so a physiotherapist and a picture house share a root.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
cinemakinetictelekinesiskinesthetic
In a sentence
She switched from physiotherapy to kinesiology after her second knee operation.
The kinesiology lab films every sprinter from four angles.