Everyday LifeGreek → English
Macrobiotic
/ˌmækroʊbaɪˈɑtɪk/adjective
Describing a diet of whole grains and vegetables followed in the belief that it prolongs life.
The Greek roots
μακρός
makrós
long, large
βίος
bíos
life
Literally: “long-lived”
The story of the word
Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland's Makrobiotik appeared in 1796 and reached English the next year as The Art of Prolonging Life; his prescriptions were moderation, sleep and air, and the book stayed in print for a century. George Ohsawa took the word in the twentieth century for a regime built on brown rice and a yin-yang balance of foods, and that is the sense the health-food shops sell. μακρός is the same length in macron, the bar drawn over a long vowel, and in macroeconomics, which looks at the whole rather than the firm.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
macronmacroeconomicsmacrocosmbiology
In a sentence
He went macrobiotic for a year and mostly learned to cook adzuki beans.