Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Statics
/ˈstætɪks/noun
The branch of mechanics dealing with bodies at rest and forces in balance.
The Greek roots
στατικός
statikós
causing to stand, of weighing
ἵστημι
hístēmi
to make stand, set up
Literally: “the art of making things stand”
The story of the word
ἡ στατικὴ τέχνη in Greek meant the art of weighing: the balance, the steelyard, the lever. Archimedes wrote the founding treatise on it, and when seventeenth-century English took the word it kept the sense of forces that cancel out. The same verb sits under a surprising spread of English: ecstasy is standing outside yourself, apostasy is standing away, a system is what is made to stand together.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
staticecstasyapostasysystemstasis
In a sentence
First-year statics is mostly free-body diagrams and the patience to draw them properly.