antenna

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin antenna (“sail yard”), a variant of antemna,^[2][3][4][5] the long yard of a sail;^[6][5] in Medieval Latin it also meant the feeler of an insect, used in the plural to translate the word for the Ancient Greek κεραία (keraía, “horn”) of insects in Aristotle.^[2][3][4][7] The Latin word is of uncertain origin;^[2][5] Etymonline and Klein suggest a link with the root Proto-Indo-European *temp- (“to stretch, extend”).^[6][8] The radio sense comes from Italian antenna, used by Guglielmo Marconi about 1895,^[2][3] apparently for the pole that held up the aerial wire in his early experiments.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

One of the feelers or "horns" on the head of an insect or other arthropod: 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, according to Barnhart and Merriam-Webster;^[5][9] Etymonline dates it to the 1640s,^[6] while the OED's first example is from John Wilkins's Essay towards a Real Character (1668).^[2]

Semantic evolution

Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories explains that the Greek word Aristotle used for insects' feelers, keraia, meant "horn" first and "sail yard" only secondarily,^[10] and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins connects the image with the long yards of lateen sails, set at an angle to the mast like an insect's feelers.^[11] From the early 19th century the word was used figuratively, in the plural, for a person's instinctive powers of perception (1811),^[2][4] and Darwin used it in botany for sensitive projections on the flowers of certain orchids (1862).^[2][12] The radio sense, a wire or rod for sending or receiving radio waves, is recorded from 1902, in J. A. Fleming's article in the Encyclopædia Britannica,^[2][6][5] and the OED notes that it was soon associated with the insect sense because of both appearance and function.^[2] A wire triggering a naval mine was called an antenna from 1918.^[2]

Timeline

• 1646 – an insect's feeler.^[5][9]
• 1668 – the OED's first example of this sense.^[2]
• 1811 – figurative, in the plural, powers of perception.^[2]
• 1862 – botany, a sensitive projection on an orchid flower.^[2]
• 1902 – a radio aerial.^[2][6][5]
• 1918 – a wire that fires a naval contact mine.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. (plural antennae) One of a pair of long, movable sensory appendages on the head of an insect, crustacean or other arthropod; a feeler.
2. (plural antennas) A wire, rod or dish for sending or receiving radio or television signals; an aerial.
3. (figurative, plural) A person's ability to pick up subtle signs: Her political antennae warned her that the vote would be close.

Word family

• antennal
• antennate
• antennule
• dish antenna
• Yagi antenna

Related words

• aerial
• feeler

Usage notes

Collins and the Shorter Oxford give the plural antennae for the zoological sense and usually antennas for the radio sense.^[13][4]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins