Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Silo
/ˈsaɪloʊ/noun
A tower or pit for storing grain or fodder, and by extension any unit that does not share what it holds.
The Greek roots
σιρός
sirós
pit for storing grain
Literally: “grain pit”
Follow a root:σιρός1 word
The story of the word
Latin sirus, an underground corn store, is usually derived from Greek σιρός, though some etymologists prefer a pre-Roman Iberian source for the Spanish word, so the Greek link is likely rather than settled. Ancient storage went downward, sealed against air; the tall American tower is a nineteenth-century invention for fermenting silage. The missile silo dates from the 1950s and the office kind, where departments hoard information, from the 1980s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Spanish → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
silageensilage
In a sentence
Two departments were solving the same problem in separate silos for a year.