physics

physics
\ \ [16] Physics comes ultimately from Greek phúsisnature’, a derivative of phúeinbring forth, cause to grow’. The science of studying the natural world was hence phusiké epistémēknowledge of nature’, and phusiké, turned into a noun, passed into English via Latin physica and Old French fisique as fisike. By now its meaning had shifted from ‘natural science’ to ‘medicine’, a sense preserved in the now archaic physic [13] and in the derivative physician [13], and the modern plural form, which restores the original meaning, was a direct translation of Greek phusikáthe physics’, the title of Aristotle’s writings on natural science. Physique [19] was borrowed from French.
\ \ Cf.PHYSIQUE

Word origins - 2ed. . 2005.

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