Earth & SkyGreek → English
Syzygy
/ˈsɪzɪdʒi/noun
An alignment of three bodies in a gravitational system, such as sun, earth and moon in a line.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
with, together
ζυγόν
zygón
yoke
Literally: “yoked together”
The story of the word
The yoke that pairs two oxen gave Greek its word for any couple: συζυγία covered marriage, grammatical conjugation and pairs of opposites. Astronomy kept the yoking sense for the moments when three bodies fall into line, which is why every eclipse and every spring tide is a syzygy. The word also has the distinction of holding no vowel letter but y, three times over.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
zygotezeugmasynthesissymbiosis
In a sentence
High tides run strongest at syzygy, when the sun and moon pull along the same line.