Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Seismograph
/ˈsaɪzməˌɡræf/noun
An instrument that records the ground motion of an earthquake as a trace.
The Greek roots
σεισμός
seismós
shaking, earthquake
γράφω
gráphō
I write
Literally: “earthquake writer”
The story of the word
The machine beat the word by seventeen centuries. Zhang Heng's bronze vessel of 132 AD dropped a ball from a dragon's mouth into a toad's, pointing towards a quake nobody in the capital had felt. The English name arrived in the 1850s with the rest of Robert Mallet's earthquake vocabulary. Strictly a seismograph writes the record while a seismometer measures the motion, a distinction almost nobody has observed since the words were made.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1858
Same family
seismicseismologytelegraphphotograph
In a sentence
The seismograph in the basement picks up passing lorries as well as earthquakes.
Every seismograph on the island wrote the same line at 04:12.