Transcript Word origins - Primary Resources

Word origins
What is in a word ?
Key idea
To know the origin of words
is to know how men think,
how they made their
civilisations.
For Example
► Politics
– comes from the word ‘polis’
meaning ‘city state’ or ‘community’
► Democracy
– ‘demos’ meaning people and
‘kratis’ meaning ‘power’.
► Gymnasium
– from ‘gumnasion’ meaning
‘exercise naked’
Each of these words could only come from the Ancient Greeks, as before
their time, none of these ideas existed. So when you use the word
‘Democracy’ - it comes straight from that era – over 3000 years ago.
We make words today, that are particular to our time and place. Every
year The Oxford English Dictionary adds a few words to its pages that
have become part of our language as they are in common use and
express meaning today in our lives NOW
st
21
Century Words
► Chillybin
– a box for keeping things cold – if
you were going on a picnic.
► Supersize – larger than average, extremely
large
► Fanboy – a male fan, especially one who is
obsessed with comics, sciencefiction, or
popmusic.
► Can
you think what their origins might be ?
Back to the Greeks ….
► Here
are some Greek
word ‘roots’ – can you
think what they might
mean ?
► -bapti
► Baptism
► -nano
► Nanosecond
► -bol
► Ball,
► -mania
bowl
► Maniac
What’s My Meaning !
Let’s play this game.
Get into pairs – take your word, look it up, write the
definition on one side of the card, and the word on
the other (its Greek root underlined). Then take
another piece of card and find an alternative
definition and make another card.
In teams of 8 (ie 4 pairs) present to another team of
8, your words, and see if you can guess which is
the real meaning. Keep a score.