English
logopoeia
Logopoeia comes from Ancient Greek λόγος ‘speech, discourse, story, study, word, reason’, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- ‘to collect (words)’.
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*leǵ-1‘to collect (words)’reconstructed
- Proto-Hellenicc. 2200–1600 BCE*lógos1reconstructed
- Ancient Greekc. 800–300 BCEλόγος2lógos‘speech, discourse, story, study, word, reason’
- Englishearliest quotation 1931logopoeia2
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, Ancient Greek λόγος
- 2 Wiktionary, English logopoeia
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1931, Ezra Pound: “Unless I am right in discovering logopoeia in Propertius…”.
Lineage
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*leǵ-Wiktionary, Ancient Greek λόγος‘to collect (words)’reconstructed
- Proto-Hellenicc. 2200–1600 BCE*lógosWiktionary, Ancient Greek λόγοςreconstructed
- Ancient Greekc. 800–300 BCEλόγοςWiktionary, English logopoeialógos‘speech, discourse, story, study, word, reason’
- Englishearliest quotation 1931logopoeiaWiktionary, English logopoeia. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1931, Ezra Pound: “Unless I am right in discovering logopoeia in Propertius…”
The story
Coined by Ezra Pound from Ancient Greek λόγος (lógos, “speech, discourse, story, study, word, reason”) and Ancient Greek ποίησις (poíēsis, “poetry”) in a 1918 review of the Others poetry anthology.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- ‘to collect (words)’
election, collection, technology, lesson, select, elite, collect, eligible, elect, elegant, legion, coil, negligence, catalogue, negligible, negligent, leach, diligent, lexicon, astrology, lexical, cull, epilogue, cosmology, legation, dialectic, gynecologist, lignite, lexis, lignin, alexia, ineligibility, dialogic, 148 more
through Proto-Hellenic *lógos
archaeological, pathological, etymology, astrological, homologous, pathophysiology, psychopathology, neurophysiology, bacteriological, histopathology, 100 more
through Ancient Greek λόγος ‘speech, discourse, story, study, word, reason’
logic, apology, trilogy, sociology, terminology, analogy, physiology, pathology, monologue, logos, prologue, pathologist, archaeologist, logistic, eulogy, epistemology, entomology, etiology, bacteriology, bacteriologist, syllogism, apologia, 109 more
Today it means
noun One of Ezra Pound's three kinds of poetry, consisting of the use of words for more than their denotation, taking advantage of the context associated with a word.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “logopoeia”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Ancient Greek λόγος. 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 / Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- / logopoeia