Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Psychedelic
/ˌsaɪkəˈdɛlɪk/adjective
Producing altered perception, or resembling the intense colour and pattern associated with such states.
The Greek roots
ψυχή
psychḗ
soul, mind
δηλοῦν
dēloûn
to make visible
Literally: “mind-revealing”
The story of the word
The psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined it in a verse exchange with Aldous Huxley in 1956. Huxley had proposed phanerothyme, spirit-made-visible; Osmond replied with a couplet about fathoming hell or soaring angelic on a pinch of psychedelic, and published the word in 1957. He wanted a term free of the pathology built into hallucinogen, since the drugs showed the mind rather than deceived it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1957
Same family
psychepsychologypsychosis
In a sentence
The sleeve art is pure 1967 psychedelic swirl.