Figured I’d jump on the eclipse bandwagon today and talk about a part of it I haven’t seen anyone else mention–the word itself! 😉

Eclipse has been in English since around 1300 (since, you know, there was English), taken from French, which was taken from Latin, which is taken from Greek, all sounding like the original ekleipsis. But what did that original word assigned to the phenomena mean?

Quite literally, it means “an abandonment, a failing, a forsaking.” Ek is “out” and leipein is “to leave.” So when something abandoned its spot and went out, much like the sun and moon sometimes appear to do . . . there you go!

Are you planning on (safely) viewing the eclipse today? It’s our first day of school, and we figured that was a pretty sweet science lesson for day 1. =) We bought eclipse glasses for the family last year when we were studying our astronomy unit and will be breaking those out today for sure!