Sphenoid

The story of the word

σφήν is a wedge, the tool that splits wood. The bone sits at the base of the skull and touches almost every other bone in it, driven into the middle like a keystone laid flat, with the pituitary gland resting in a saddle on its upper face. Eighteenth-century anatomists named a great many bones this way, which is why one skull contains a wedge, a sieve and an upsilon.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English

First recorded

18th century