Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Nanotechnology
/ˌnænoʊtɛkˈnɒlədʒi/noun
The design and manufacture of structures at the scale of billionths of a metre.
The Greek roots
νᾶνος
nânos
dwarf
τέχνη
tékhnē
craft, skill
λόγος
lógos
account, study
Literally: “study of dwarf craft”
The story of the word
Norio Taniguchi used the word in 1974 for machining tolerances below a micrometre, which was a modest engineering claim. Eric Drexler took it somewhere else in 1986 with Engines of Creation, arguing for molecular assemblers that would build matter atom by atom, and the popular meaning has been arguing with the laboratory one ever since. The Greek νᾶνος was a dwarf; τέχνη was craft, the making skill inside technique and architect.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1974
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
nanometertechnologytechniquearchitect
In a sentence
Most of what gets sold as nanotechnology is a coating with very small particles in it.