Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Nomad
/ˈnəʊmæd/noun
A member of a people that moves with its herds instead of settling.
The Greek roots
νομάς
nomás
roaming for pasture
Literally: “one who pastures flocks”
Follow a root:νομάς1 word
The story of the word
νέμω means to allot or distribute, and out of it come both νομή, pasture, the grazing that falls to you, and νόμος, law, what is allotted as right. A νομάς is simply someone moving animals to the next share of grass. Greek geographers applied it to the tribes of North Africa, and the Roman province of Numidia carries the same word on the map. Νέμεσις, the goddess, is the distribution of what each person has coming.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
nemesiseconomyautonomyastronomy
In a sentence
The nomads reach the summer pasture in the last week of May, as they always have.
Calling yourself a digital nomad would have baffled anyone who actually herded sheep.