Etymology of 'kinematics' [closed]

What is the etymology of the word 'kinematics' - the maths of movement, not taking into account physical forces such as friction and air resistance.

I was speaking with a friend about it and suggested that it comes from the two words: kinetic (essentially meaning movement) and mathematics. These 2 words seemed to go together well to make 'kinematics', and seemed a liable suggestion as kinematics is the mathematics of movement.

He laughed at me and said "That's ridiculous, no words come from just putting 2 words together".

So, what is the etymology of kinematics?

And just so that when I next see him I can give him some words that were made from 2 being put together, it would be lovely if you could throw a few into your answer.

Solution 1:

Etymonline for kinematics shows

“science of motion,” 1840, from Fr. cinématique (Ampère, 1834), from Gk. kinesis “movement, motion” (see cite). Related: Kinematic (1864); kinematical.

That is, in 1834 Ampère coined (or used) the French term cinématique, which was adopted into English as kinematics ca. 1840. Note, the entry for cite refers to Greek kinein, “to move”.

Under Kinematics, OED cited Whewell, 1840: “M. Ampère, in his Essai sur la Philosophie des Sciences (1834)..proposes to term it Kinematics (Cinématique)” and Thomson & Tait, 1879: “We adopt the suggestion of Ampere and use the term Kinematics for the purely geometrical science of motion in the abstract.”

Kinematics thus sprang into being as a single word, or perhaps as a root plus a suffix. In English, suffix -ic is “Used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning "of or pertaining to"”. However, kinematics came from the French with a -tique suffix already in use, so -tics was an English adaptation rather than addition to the word.

Solution 2:

It's a direct derivation from the Greek, though it wasn't coined till the 19th century. The Greek for 'motion' is kinema from the root verb kineein, and -ic (or -tic after a vowel) is a common way of forming adjectives both in Greek and in English. Certainly kinetics would have been a simpler word for this new-fangled 'science of motion'; but the word was already taken. It does appear that Ampere was the first to name the science, as 'cinematique'; English scientists preferred the version/translation kinematics.

(Kinematograph was a similar coinage, to describe 'moving pictures', and both that and its abbreviation kinema are common in the literature of the period. It seems that what determined the modern cinema for one and kinematics for the other may have been simply that there were more scientific pioneers of photography who spoke French, and more scientists of motion who spoke English.)