Words & WritingGreek → English
Tome
/toʊm/noun
A large, heavy book, usually one of a set.
The Greek roots
τόμος
tómos
a slice, a volume
τέμνειν
témnein
to cut
Literally: “a piece cut off”
The story of the word
τόμος was a cut, then the roll of papyrus a long work had been cut into, because no single roll could hold a whole treatise. A tome was therefore a physical section of a text, and nothing about it implied weight. The heavy-volume sense is an English exaggeration dating from the 1500s. The root τέμνειν, to cut, also gives atom, the uncuttable thing, and anatomy, cutting up.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 1510s
Same family
atomanatomyepitomeappendectomy
In a sentence
He arrived carrying a tome on canal law that nobody had opened since 1962.