Earth & SkyGreek → English
Pole
/poʊl/noun
Either end of the axis on which a sphere turns, or either end of a magnet.
The Greek roots
πόλος
pólos
pivot, axis
Literally: “pivot, axis”
Follow a root:πόλος2 words
The story of the word
Pólos was the pivot a thing turns on, and Greek astronomers used it for the fixed point of the wheeling sky. Latin took polus and English had it by the late fourteenth century, well before anyone stood at one. The other pole, the wooden one you lean a bean plant against, is a different word from Latin palus, a stake, which also lies behind pale in beyond the pale.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
polardipolebipolarpolarise
In a sentence
Magnetic north wanders; the geographic pole stays put.
Two opposite poles of the same argument, and both of them were his.