Like when they created that riding horse video that it is the first video created, using the idea of frames per second and motion image. How do people think: wow let’s call this a movie, let’s call this a video etc
Or when they invented the train, they just go like “look at this amazing way of transportation, let’s call it a train”
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The word movie is a shortened version of what they used to call it: moving picture. The words generally come from descriptions of what the thing is, sometimes from other languages, sometimes not. Train, for example, comes from the Latin traphere which means to pull or draw. Then it got translated to French trahiner which eventually became train.
Film is a pretty good example for how words change over time – it derives from old English *filmen*, a thin skin or hide, from germanic *fello*, an animal hide, ultimately from proto-indo-european *pel-* from which the somewhat related word *pelt* and terms like *pellagra* (a skin condition) are also derived. From the sense of “a thin skin”, *film* started being used to mean “a membrane” or “a thin layer” by way of metaphor – we still use *skin* and *film* in this sense, like, “there’s a gross film forming on top of that old yoghurt”. When early photographic film was made by depositing a thin layer of chemicals on plates, the term “film” was used for it in a literal way, just the “thin layer” meaning. Eventually when film started being made with the chemicals on paper or celluloid the term started being used for the whole product. And by extension, “film” get applied to early motion picture film itself, and by further extension, to the act of recording on film, as well as the finished product, a complete film. An English speaker from the middle ages would probably be quite confused as to how we send thin layers of animal skin to each other over the internet, you know, among several other things about our society. But the progression of the development of the word at each step made logical sense at the time as an extended or metaphorical use of an already-used word
>Or when they invented the train, they just go like “look at this amazing way of transportation, let’s call it a train”
There were already things called “train” when the railway was invented: an army on the march, for example, would be accompanied by a long column of wagons, carrying their gear and provisions, that was called “baggage train”. So when people saw a long column of wagons, pulled by a single locomotive, they’d call it a (railway) train.
A lot of inventions are either named for their similarity with an existing thing, as in the train example, or by describing what they do, possibly in Latin or Greek, like in “telephone” which is Greek for “far sound”.
>Like when they created that riding horse video that it is the first video created, using the idea of frames per second and motion image. How do people think: wow let’s call this a movie, let’s call this a video etc
The riding horse was a motion picture, not video. It was pictures that moved. Not a surprising name and it was later shortened to the movie. It was not a video
Video is electronically transmitted moving images. The usages start in early TV experiments in the 1930s and come from the Latin verb videre ‘to see’. It is formed like Audio that comes from audire “to hear”.
In science and engineering using Latin and greek to name stuff is common historically and today. If you look back at universities Latin was the language used all over Europe. A move to local languages starts in the 18th century
Today video is primarily used for recording pictures and sound electronically, it stared on videotape but is not primary digital in computers. The first video tape recorder was sold in 1956
The word train was not invented for the transportation we know today. The origin is latin trahō (“to pull, to draw”) and is used for something elongated or trailing. Fabric that extends back of clothing and trails on the ground is called a train, You see it sometimes today in bridal gowns.
You also see it used in a group of people following a king or a mobile. They often had a cloth with fabric trains, this was both in male and female clothes.
So a line or just a sequence of parts or events was a train. A line of wagon is a wagon train
Then when you have multiple wagon rails it was naturally called a train. These will be wooden tracks and wagons pulled by horses or other animals. They are often called Wagonway today.
You later get metal tracks but still hoses that pull them and finally steam-powered locomotives.
So no one invented the trains as we know them today and invented the word, it was already in use multiple of something that move in a line, it might be connected or not connected.
The way to find the origin of a world is to search for etymology and the word, Another good place to look for history of invention is Wikipedia articles
A good way to find the origin of a word is
Theres a lot of great info here, and I just wanted to add in this small bit about “movie” specifically.
Back when movies were first becoming a thing, slang had a relatively different structure in American society. There was a habit of adding “-ie” to the end of things, especially within the film industry. Walkie-talkie is a good example of this, as the device allows you to walk while you talk, and this extends to movies. It was like a picture book, but it moved, so it got called a movie. When the invention of movies with sound came around, there was still a lot of prevalent silent films and it took time for a full transition, during that time movies with sound were called “talkies”
‘Audio’ comes from the Latin ‘I listen to’. ‘Video’ was deliberately coined to sound like audio, but using the root of ‘videre’, ‘to see.’
The term ‘film’ predates movies and photography, its original meaning is a thin layer of something, e.g. the film on top of cold soup or a super-thin piece of skin/leather you wrap around something. It was applied to the medium used for photographs because it’s a very thin translucent sheet. Then movies got called films because they came on rolls of individual film pieces. They got called movies as an abbreviation of ‘moving pictures’ just like ‘talkies’ is an abbreviation of ‘talking pictures.’
Not exactly the same thing, but I love how the term “wireless” is really a very old term. It seems like a modern tech term, but in reality, they were using the term “wireless” when they were referring to radios between old ships (like in the era of the Titanic). The old morse code telegraphs used wires that ran along the railroads, But when they started using the same transmitters on ships to communicate, they became “wireless”. The term sort of went away (I think) for a period of time, and then when wi-fi became a thing, it returned.
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