In high school I had a wonderful teacher, Mr. Martin.

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He brought the arcane mathematics of physics to life, in part by putting a human face on them; and he told a tale of etymology.

In the 1500s this guy named Nicolaus Copernicus wrote a book that proved the sun was at the centre of our solar system. But he didn’t publish it for decades—in fact until the year of his death—because it was so controversial.

Back then the church believed that man, in the image of God, must occupy the centre of the universe. Because of this Copernicus was scared that the authorities would reject his theories and worse.

Later, another guy named Galileo Galilei agreed with what Copernicus had written and the way he was treated certainly justifies Copernicus’ hesitation. Galileo was threatened with torture until he swore that he didn’t agree with Copernicus after all.

The name of that book Copernicus wrote was De Revolutionibus and my teacher Mr. Martin told us that it came as such a shock to people that this is where we get our word revolution, meaning social upheaval.

I really liked Mr. Martin and he was usually right.  But to my disappointment he was wrong about that etymology.

Revolution appeared first in English in 1390 so well before either Copernicus or Galileo were on the scene. At that point it actually referred to the movements of heavenly bodies, though humans were still at the centre.

In 1450 it appears for the first time with a meaning of “great change” as would apply later to the French revolution or other political upheavals.

1450 was still 23 years before Copernicus was born.

The thing is that the word revolution is from Latin and Copernicus was writing in Latin.

Latin dug up the roots of revolution as volvere from an Indo-European origin wel meaning “to turn.”