Today’s lesson in Word Power is to understand the etymology and history behind the word muscle.
Muscle (Noun): [mus-cle]
- A tissue composed of fibers capable of contracting to effect bodily movement.
- A contractile organ consisting of a special bundle of muscle tissue, which moves a particular bone, part, or substance of the body: the heart muscle; the muscles of the arm. (American Heritage Dictionary)
Etymology of Muscle
At first, this word looks very simple and indeed it is, but what I find most interesting about the word muscle is that the original meaning is something entirely different than what most people would imagine. The etymology of muscle can be traced back all the way to the Ancient Greeks, but the word as we know it was really applied under the Latin language. Allow me to explain . . .
μυς (mus)
In Ancient Greece, the word μυς meant a mouse. When Greece became infused into the Roman Empire, some of the ancient language changed and some didn’t. Mus was one of the words that didn’t change at all and the Romans used the word mus to refer to a mouse as well. However, the Romans did develop the word musculus to mean “little mouse”. Unfortunately, there are only a few words which we use today where we can see the stem mus in them, such as mussel (a sea mouse) and Mustelids (referring to the weasel genus).
Musculus, i
As stated above, musculus is a Latin noun that means little mouse. Approximately in 1533, it was noticed that the shape and movements of biceps strongly resembled little mice. So as you can guess this was when the the word musculus began to take on its new form muscle. Through the evolution of languages from Latin to Old French to Middle English, the suffix -culus changed to -cle. This change happened with many different Latin words that had a similar ending, such as circle and article.
Summary
Although neither the Greek word μυς nor the Latin word musculus, literally mean muscle, they are both key components in understanding the etymology behind the word. This example in etymology really shows you how words that mean something today could be derived from words that meant something entirely different 500 years ago. Literally speaking, when somebody uses the word muscle, they are really referring to the little mice moving inside the human skin.
Extra Credit
The amount (edit) number of muscles that are inside the human body range (edit) ranges from 640 to 850. While there is no specific number for the amount of muscles that are in the human body, experts have categorized all muscles into three categories. Skeletal muscles are voluntary muscles meaning that the person has control on how it is used. Skeletal muscles refer to muscles such as biceps, triceps, etc. (the inspiration for the word muscle). There are also smooth muscles which are involuntary muscles inside the stomach and intestines. The third type of muscle is categorized as a cardiac muscle.
At the request of fellow Babeler Jason Morgan, tune in next Thursday for a breakdown of the word bucolic.
3 Comments
This is a nicely-written and well-researched article that kept me interested all the way to the end. I thrive on this type of information. However, the following sentence from near the end has some serious problems grammatically:
“The amount of muscles that are inside the human body range from 640 to 850.”
Please do not use the word “amount” to refer to a number. You can use “number” for that. Only in money can an amount be properly expressed as a number. Also please make the verb “range” agree with the subject. Simplify your sentence to see if it works. Here you have “Amount range.” Please, please, please.
Thank you for your comment Terry. I greatly appreciate your input and grammatical prowess.
Dear Terry
Please do so more often of this attentive gaze at the construction of the sentences. It will help like me to learn a lot. The lovely short article dear Gregory about etymology of Latin word is excellent.
Thanks a lot