Etymology

hyphen

hy·phen
H4Y4P3H4E1N1

Today it means: The symbol "‐", typically used to join two or more words to form a compound term, or to indicate that a word has been split at the end of a line. Full definition →

Late Latin hyphen ← Ancient Greek ῠ̔φέν
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Ancient Greek · derived fromῠ̔φέν“in one, as a single word”
  2. Late Latin · learned borrowing fromhyphen
  3. English todayhyphen

Learned borrowing from Late Latin hyphen, from Ancient Greek ῠ̔φέν (hŭphén, “in one, as a single word”), univerbation of ῠ̔φ’ ἕν (hŭph’ hén, “under one”), from ῠ̔πο- (hŭpo-, “under”) + ἕν (hén, “one”), neuter of εἷς (heîs, “one”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.