Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Kinesthesia
/ˌkɪnəsˈθiːʒə/noun
The sense of where one's limbs are and how they are moving, without needing to look.
The Greek roots
κίνησις
kínēsis
movement
αἴσθησις
aísthēsis
perception, sensation
Literally: “movement perception”
The story of the word
Henry Charlton Bastian proposed the term in 1880 for the sense nobody had counted, the one that lets you touch your nose with your eyes shut. Sherrington later covered wider ground with proprioception, built from Latin instead. Both name the same everyday miracle, and its loss is devastating: patients who lose the sense must watch their own legs to walk. κίνησις also drives cinema, from the moving pictures of κινηματο-.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1880
Same family
kineticcinemaanaesthesiaaestheticsynesthesia
In a sentence
Dancers train kinesthesia deliberately, until the mirror stops being necessary.