Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Sociology
/ˌsoʊsiˈɑːlədʒi/noun
The study of how human societies are organised and how they change.
The Greek roots
λόγος
lógos
word, study, account
Literally: “study of companions”
Follow a root:λόγος73 words
The story of the word
Auguste Comte wanted to call it social physics, found that Quetelet had taken the phrase, and in 1838 bolted Latin socius, a companion, onto the Greek ending -λογία. Classicists have complained about the mongrel ever since, which has done nothing to slow it down. English had the word within five years of the French.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek and Latin → French coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1843
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
anthropologycriminologymethodology
In a sentence
She switched from law to sociology after one lecture on prisons.
The finding is old news to anyone who has read the sociology.