κίνημα

Greek kinema (κίνημα) meant 'movement,' from the verb kinein, 'to move.' The word had no connection to images or entertainment — it was a plain description of physical motion. Aristotle used kinesis (the related noun) in his Physics to discuss the nature of change and movement. For the Greeks, kinema was philosophy and mechanics. It would take 2,300 years for someone to point a camera at it.

On December 28, 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiere held a public screening at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. They charged one franc per ticket. Their device was the cinematographe — from Greek kinema ('movement') and graphein ('to write'). The name claimed the invention wrote motion. The first film shown was La Sortie de l'Usine Lumiere a Lyon — workers leaving the Lumiere factory. Forty-six seconds long.

The word shortened almost immediately. French clipped cinematographe to cinema. English borrowed it by 1899. Americans preferred movies (from 'moving pictures') and later films, but cinema remained the prestige term — 'the cinema' as an art form, 'a cinema' as the building. The Greek root kinein also gave English kinetic (1864), kinesthesia (1880), and telekinesis (1890). All movement, all from the same verb.

Thomas Edison had developed the Kinetoscope in 1891 — also from kinein — but his device showed films to one viewer at a time through a peephole. The Lumieres' projection onto a screen for a paying audience was what created cinema as a shared experience. Edison named his device for individual motion. The Lumieres named theirs for collective writing. The word that won was the one built for crowds.