cinema

\ \ [20] The cinema is so named because it shows moving pictures. The Greek verb for ‘move’ was kīnein (source of English kinetic and, via the related Latin cīre, a range of -cite words, including excite, incite, and recite). Its noun derivative was kínēma ‘movement’, from which in 1896 Auguste and Louis Jean Lumière coined the French term cinématographe for their new invention for recording and showing moving pictures. This and its abbreviated form cinéma soon entered English, the latter in 1909.

\ \ In early years the graecized form kinema had some currency in English, but this had virtually died out by the 1940s.

\ \ Cf.⇒ CITE, EXCITE, KINETIC, INCITE, RECITE