psychologia

Forms

psychologia f (genitive psychologiae); first declension^[1][2] An early spelling is psichiologia.^[2]

Etymology

It is a New Latin coinage, from Ancient Greek ψυχή (psukhḗ, “breath, spirit, soul”) + -λογία (-logía, “study of”).^[3] Etymonline thinks it was probably coined in Germany in the mid-16th century, by Melanchthon.^[3] Ramminger's Neo-Latin word list cites a lost book of Marko Marulić on the human soul, listed in a life of Marulić, whose title begins with the spelling ⟨Psichiologia⟩.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest dated use in Ramminger is the title of Otto Casmann's Psychologia anthropologica (Hanau, 1594), where it is the doctrine of the human soul,^[2] the sense “study of the soul” that English psychology first had in the 1650s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Casmann defined it as the first part of anthropology, teaching the nature of the human spirit through its faculties, and Goclenius praised its use to the moralist, the lawyer, the physician and the theologian.^[2]

With Christian Wolff's Psychologia empirica (1732) it came to mean the science of the phenomena of the mind.^[3]

Timeline

• 1594 – Otto Casmann publishes his Psychologia anthropologica.^[2]
• 1650s – English borrows it as psychology, “study of the soul”.^[3]
• 1732 – Christian Wolff publishes his Psychologia empirica.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (New Latin) The study or doctrine of the soul.^[2][3]
2. (New Latin) Psychology;^[1] psychologia in profundum, depth psychology.^[1]

Related words

• English psychology

References

1. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
2. ^ a b c d e f g Ramminger, Johann, Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700, www.neulatein.de
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com