Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Synchronize
/ˈsɪŋkrənaɪz/verb
To make two or more things happen at the same time or agree in timing.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
together, with
χρόνος
chrónos
time
Literally: “to time together”
The story of the word
For its first two centuries in English the verb was intransitive: events synchronized, meaning they happened to coincide, and nobody made them do it. The transitive sense, forcing two things into step, needed a world of railway timetables and coordinated military attacks, and arrives in the nineteenth century. Later Greek had συγχρονίζειν for being contemporary with something, in a culture where the most demanding thing to synchronize was a chorus.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1620s
Same family
chronicchronologyanachronismchronometer
In a sentence
Synchronize your watches, he said, and everyone pretended it was normal.
The two devices refuse to synchronize over anything but cable.