English
focus
Focus comes from Latin focus ‘hearth, fireplace’.
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English focus
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula: “Whole pages of it are filled with masses of…”.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfocusWiktionary, English focus‘hearth’
- Englishearliest quotation 1897focusWiktionary, English focus. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula: “Whole pages of it are filled with masses of…”
The story
"One of the interesting properties of an ellipse is that if there were a light bulb at one focus, then all the light that it emits would reflect off the ellipse and converge at the other focus. This is why Kepler originally used the name focus for these points."
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with focus, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- ‘to shine’
- phone ← telephone ← téléphone ← φωνή ← *pʰōnā́
- professor ← proffessur ← profiteor ← fateor ← *fatēōr
- ben ← *bōni ← *bōniz
- phase ← phasis ← φάσις ← φᾰ(ν)- ← *pʰáňňō
- favor ← favour ← favour ← faveō ← *bʰeh₂weh₁yeti
- famous ← fāmōsus ← fāma ← *fāmā ← *bʰéh₂meh₂
- favourite ← favorit ← favorit ← favorire ← favore
- ban ← bannen ← bannan ← *bannan ← *bannaną
- fantasy ← fantasie ← fantasie ← phantasia ← φαντασία
- fate ← fāta ← fātus ← *fātos ← *bʰh₂-tó-s
- fancy ← fansy ← fantasie ← fantasia ← phantasia
- fame ← fāma ← *fāmā ← *bʰéh₂meh₂
162 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun A point at which reflected or refracted rays of light converge.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “focus”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin focus / focus