psychology

Psychology comes from Greek psyche "soul" or "breath" and logos "account." The Latinized term psychologia appears in the 16th century in scholarly writing. It referred to the study of the soul rather than modern mind. The Greek parts made it sound philosophical.

German and Latin scholars used the term in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it widened in the 18th. Christian Wolff's 1732 work divided psychologia into empirical and rational branches. The name began to shift from theology toward observation. The word kept its Greek structure while its meaning moved.

English adopted psychology in the late 18th century, with steady growth in the 19th. By the time of William James in 1890, it was an academic science of mental life. The word carried both philosophical and experimental weight. Its spelling fixed to the Greek-derived form.

The 20th century expanded the field into behaviorism, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Psychology now names a discipline focused on mind, behavior, and brain. The old sense of "soul" is largely historical. The Greek root psyche still gives the word its shape.