Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Tendon
/ˈtɛndən/noun
A band of tough tissue joining muscle to bone.
The Greek roots
τένων
ténōn
sinew, cord
Literally: “the stretcher”
Follow a root:τένων2 words
The story of the word
Greek τένων comes from τείνειν, to stretch, and medieval Latin turned it into tendo under the pull of Latin tendere, which means the same thing and is a genuine cousin. Anatomy kept the Greek in the name of the largest one: the Achilles tendon, after the heel where Thetis held her son. From the same stretching root come tone, tension, tetanus and the hypotenuse.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- around 1400
Same family
tonetetanushypotenusetenotomy
In a sentence
He tore a tendon in his ankle and missed the rest of the season.