Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Sponge
/spʌndʒ/noun
A soft absorbent mass used for washing, or the sea animal whose skeleton provides it.
The Greek roots
σπόγγος
spóngos
sponge
Literally: “sea sponge”
Follow a root:σπόγγος1 word
The story of the word
σπόγγος, σφόγγος in Attic, named what divers cut off the seabed around Kalymnos and Symi. Greeks washed with them, padded armour with them, and drank through them. Latin spongia handed the word to Old English, which is why sponge feels native and is not. 'Sponging off' someone appears in English by the seventeenth century, straight from the soaking up.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old English
- First recorded
- Old English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
spongyspongiform
In a sentence
A sponge has no organs at all, which is easy to forget in the bath.