Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Organ
/ˈɔrɡən/noun
A part of the body with a particular function, or a keyboard instrument sounded by pipes.
The Greek roots
ὄργανον
órganon
instrument, tool
Literally: “tool, implement”
Follow a root:ὄργανον5 words
The story of the word
Anything you work with was an ὄργανον: a hammer, a ship's tackle, a surgeon's blade. The word comes from ἔργον, work, which also sits inside energy. Aristotle's followers collected his logical treatises under the title Organon, the instrument of thought. Latin organum drifted towards the musical sense, which Old English took as organe, while the anatomical sense arrived separately through medical Latin.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old English → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
organicorganismorganizeenergyergonomics
In a sentence
The liver is the only organ that will grow back a lost portion.
Somebody was practising on the organ upstairs, badly.