Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Psephology
/sɪˈfɒlədʒi/noun
The statistical study of elections, voting patterns and opinion polls.
The Greek roots
ψῆφος
psêphos
pebble, vote
-λογία
-logía
study of
Literally: “study of pebbles”
The story of the word
Athenian jurors voted by dropping pebbles into urns, so ψῆφος slid from stone to ballot to the vote itself. The English word was minted in 1952, when the Oxford historian W. F. R. Hardie supplied it to R. B. McCallum, who wanted a name for what he was doing to election returns. The silent initial p is the usual English surrender to a Greek cluster we refuse to pronounce.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1952
Same family
psephitepsephogram
In a sentence
Late-night psephology on the BBC has become its own kind of spectator sport.
Her psephology predicted the swing seats within a point.