Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Thermostat
/ˈθɜːrməstæt/noun
A device that switches heating or cooling on and off to hold a set temperature.
The Greek roots
θερμός
thermós
hot, warm
στατός
statós
standing, held fixed
Literally: “heat held standing”
The story of the word
Andrew Ure patented a bimetallic heat regulator in 1830 and the name came with it: two metals bonded together, bending as they expand at different rates, breaking a circuit. Warren Johnson put one in a Milwaukee classroom in 1883 and founded a company on it. The -stat ending went on to build rheostat, gyrostat and photostat, all of them things that hold something steady.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1831
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
thermometerthermalrheostatstatic
In a sentence
Somebody had set the thermostat to 26 and then left for the weekend.