Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Synthetic
/sɪnˈθɛtɪk/adjective
Made by combining parts or by chemical construction rather than taken from nature.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
with, together
τιθέναι
tithénai
to put, to place
Literally: “put together”
The story of the word
σύν plus τιθέναι, to place together, so a synthesis is a putting-together and a thesis is a thing placed. Philosophy used the word in English first, in Kant's split between analytic judgements, where the predicate is already inside the subject, and synthetic ones, where something new is added. The chemical sense of built rather than extracted arrived in the nineteenth century, and only then did synthetic pick up its faint suggestion of the second-rate.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
synthesisthesisantithesishypothesisepithet
In a sentence
The jacket is synthetic and dries in an hour, which is the whole argument for it.