Etymology

kinesthesia

K5I1N1E1S1T1H4E1S1I1A1

Today it means: Sensation or perception of motion. Full definition →

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The story

From kine- + -esthesia. Compare kinesthesis and Greek κιναισθησία (kinaisthisía). Notes If this word were borrowed on fully traditional principles it would be cinesthesia (or cinaesthesia); compare cinema from the same root. But more often this Greek root is spelled and pronounced with a k, and in the case of kinesthesia this avoids inconvenient homophony with synaesthesia, the sensation of one type of perception as another (e.g. the perception of smells as colors). Nevertheless the words are still occasionally confused; e.g. http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0849303710&id=_u4sZjHHwCYC&pg=PA581&lpg=PA581&dq=cinesthesia&sig=gFEo5BGoW75XcUVTk44aHGKgGuc.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.