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The word encyclopedia in Latin was spelled encyclopaedia, which was defined as a "general education book", because that's what it was. This is from the Greek phrase enkyklios paideia, which literally meant "circular education" ("circle" kind of meaning a "field of study" here); it was changed to one word by a clerical error. Enkyklos, the "circular" aspect of the term, is from kuklos, "circle", which in turn derives from a Proto-Indo-European root that generally had a kw- sound, like kwel, kwele, or kweklos, and meant "wheel", certainly a type of circle. The en- was just a modifying prefix. Paideia, the latter part of the aforementioned phrase, is the "education" part of it all, from pais, meaning "child", the type of person going through education. Finally, this is from Proto-Indo-European pehw, meaning "smallness". Now, if we harken back to yesterday's post, which explained how wiki actually meant "quick", the website Wikipedia actually means "quick education".
2 Comments
8/27/2020 12:47:18 am
I have recently been reading Lynne Kelly's book, The Memory Code, that describes ancient methods used by non-literate peoples to remember vast amounts of information. When people were nomadic, they used features in the landscape as prompts to remember vastly detailed information. As cultures became agrarian some cultures replicated these land marks in standing circles so that the memory would not be lost. Stonehenge is one such circle, quite literally an encyclopaedia (circle of learning). I wonder if the etymology of the word has its roots here.
Gregory Glavinovich
9/26/2022 09:03:00 pm
Very interesting. Very good Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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AUTHOR
Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history.
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