Etymology

aerobic

A1E1R1O1B3I1C3

Today it means: Living or occurring only in the presence of oxygen e.g. aerobic bacteria. Full definition →

French aérobie ← Ancient Greek ἀήρ
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Ancient Greek · derived fromἀήρ“air”
  2. French · derived fromaérobie
  3. English todayaerobic

From French aérobie, coined in 1863 by Louis Pasteur, from Ancient Greek ἀήρ (aḗr, “air”) + βίος (bíos, “life”) + -ic.

Words from the same roots

Frenchaérobie all →

aerobe

Ancient Greekἀήρ all →

airariaaerostataeroscepsis

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.