Number & MeasureGreek → English
Spiral
/ˈspaɪrəl/noun
A curve winding continuously around a fixed point while moving away from it.
The Greek roots
σπεῖρα
speîra
coil, winding
Literally: “coil-shaped”
Follow a root:σπεῖρα1 word
The story of the word
Speira named a coil of rope or a twist of anything, and in architecture the moulding at the base of a column. Archimedes gave one particular spiral its mathematics in a treatise still read; the word reached English in the sixteenth century through Medieval Latin spiralis, as a geometer's term before it was a stair. A helix climbs in three dimensions, a spiral spreads in two, and English ignores the distinction daily.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
spirespirochetespiraea
In a sentence
The stair rose in a tight spiral to the bell chamber.