pyramid

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pȳramis (“pyramid”) (stem pȳramid-), partly through pyramide,^[2][3][4][5] recorded in Old French about 1160.^[2][2][3] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek πυραμίς (pūramís),^[2][4][6] whose further origin is unknown.^[2][4][7] Etymonline and Barnhart, after older sources, take it as an alteration of an Egyptian word for a pyramid,^[3][8] and Collins and Ayto think an Egyptian source likely;^[9][10] but the OED finds a proposed Egyptian source meaning "height of a pyramid" doubtful,^[2] and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins says an Egyptian origin is now generally rejected.^[11] Some ancient writers derived it from πῦρ (pûr, “fire”), for its pointed shape, and others from πυρός (purós, “wheat”), as if a granary;^[2] Johnson (1755) followed the first view.^[12] Greek pūramís also named a cake made with wheat, which does come from purós, and the monuments have been said to be named after it, but the shape of the cake is unknown.^[2][3][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

In geometry, a solid with a polygonal base and triangular sides meeting at a point: before 1398, in John Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus,^[2][7][11] in the Latin form piramis.^[8][3] The English singular Pyramides appears in 1549,^[13][14] and the modern form pyramid became established during the 17th century.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Before 1500 the word was used of a building or monument with sloping sides meeting at the top, especially the royal tombs of ancient Egypt,^[2] while from 1552 English writers used the Latin plural pyramides.^[13] It was applied to spires, pinnacles and obelisks in architecture by 1552,^[2] to any object or pile of that shape from 1570,^[2] to trees pruned to a cone (1703), to pyramid-shaped parts of the body (1703) and to the faces of a crystal (1748).^[2] Elyot (1545) glossed Latin pyramidatus as "made steeple-wise, broad beneath and small and sharp upward".^[3] The verb, to arrange in a pyramid, is dated to 1654 by Merriam-Webster and to before 1666 by the OED.^[14][2] Financial uses began in the United States: the verb, to reinvest profits on margin, in 1888,^[2] with Barnhart dating it from 1901,^[8] and further financial senses by 1911.^[3] Ayto suggests that pediment began as a garbling of this word.^[10][11]

Timeline

• before 1398 – piramis, a geometrical solid.^[2][8]
• before 1500 – a monument with sloping sides.^[2]
• 1549 – Pyramides as a singular.^[13][14]
• 1570 – any object or pile of pyramid shape.^[2]
• before 1666 – verb, to arrange in a pyramid (1654 in Merriam-Webster).^[2][14]
• 1748 – (crystallography) a set of faces meeting in a point.^[2]
• 1850 – (billiards) a game with balls set out in a triangle.^[2]
• 1888 – verb, (finance) to reinvest profits on margin.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A massive monumental structure with a square base and four triangular sides meeting at a point, especially one built as a royal tomb in ancient Egypt.
2. (geometry) A solid figure with a polygon as its base and triangular faces that meet at a common vertex.
3. An object or pile of things in this shape: a pyramid of tins in the shop window.
4. An organization or system with many people or units at the bottom and fewer at each level above; (finance) a group of companies controlled through a chain of holding companies.

Verb

1. To arrange or pile up in the shape of a pyramid.
2. (finance) To build up holdings by using profits on existing ones as margin for further buying.

Word family

• pyramidal
• pyramidally
• pyramidical
• pyramidlike
• bipyramid
• dipyramid
• pyramidology
• pyramid scheme

Related words

• pediment
• obelisk

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 q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b c d Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
14. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster