therisingblues wrote:Psyber wrote:GWW wrote:My grandmother used to refer to the movies at the cinema as "the pictures".
The term "Cinema" is derived from a Greek word that approximates "moving pictures", and was in use before and during the 1920s.
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Actually comes to us via the French "cinematogaphe" which means moving pictures. They derived it from the Greek word "kinema" which means movement, hence in science we have "kinetic energy". The U.S probably pinched the term in the 1920's, as you say, but the French made it up in the late 19thC.
Yes, quite correct - I just didn't want to make my post too long, and to keep the focus on "Cinema" being as old a term as "pictures" or "flicks".
The term was adopted in some parts of the US from the French before the 1920s, and seems to have become more prominent here more recently under US influence.
(I haven't checked whether it was in use here in some places early in the 20th century, but it wasn't a term I heard in my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s.)