Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Kinetic
/kɪˈnɛtɪk/adjective
Relating to motion, or to the energy a body has because it is moving.
The Greek roots
κινητικός
kinētikós
of motion, moving
Literally: “of moving”
Follow a root:κινητικός2 words
The story of the word
Kinetic energy entered physics in the 1850s, paired against the potential energy Rankine had named a few years earlier, and the two words together are most of nineteenth-century mechanics. The Greek noun κίνησις is broader than movement in space: in Aristotle it covers any change at all, including a boy growing or bronze going green. The same root sits inside cinema, worn down from the Lumière brothers' cinématographe, a movement-writer.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1850s
Same family
cinematelekinesiskinesiologyhyperkinetic
In a sentence
A pendulum trades potential energy for kinetic energy and back again.
The sculpture is kinetic, so it looks foolish in photographs.