Static
/ˈstætɪk/adjective
Not moving or changing, and as a noun the crackle of atmospheric interference in a radio signal.
The Greek roots
Literally: “bringing to a standstill”
The story of the word
στατικός came from ἵστημι, to make stand, and in Greek it described the art of weighing, since a balance works by bringing two pans to rest. Physics took statics for the study of forces that cancel, then electricity at rest became static electricity, and when early radio sets crackled with the discharge of it, listeners called the noise static. That last step is barely a century old. The noun now means interference of any kind, including the sort you get from a manager.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Traffic on the site has been static for three months.
The recording is half static after the first minute.