Sport & ContestGreek → English
Paralympic
/ˌpærəˈlɪmpɪk/adjective
Belonging to the international games for athletes with a disability, held after each Olympic Games.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside, alongside
Ὀλυμπία
Olympía
Olympia, site of the games
Literally: “beside the Olympic”
The story of the word
The word began as a pun. The Stoke Mandeville games for spinal injury patients, started in 1948 by Ludwig Guttmann, produced paralympic from paraplegic plus Olympic. Once athletes with other impairments joined, the parsing was officially reworked to the Greek pará, beside, so the Paralympics are the games held alongside the Olympic ones. Both readings are printed as history, and only the second one is Greek.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern coinage → English
Same family
paralympianolympicparallelparadox
In a sentence
The Paralympic classification system is the hardest part of the sport to explain.
London 2012 was the first Paralympic Games to sell out.