Hypocenters

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The term describes the specific location underground where an earthquake starts, marking the origin of seismic energy traveling through the earth, and can also refer to the center of a nuclear blast beneath the soil
2. A specific point beneath the earth's surface denotes where seismic waves originate during an earthquake, and it can also indicate the focal point of a subsurface explosion like a nuclear detonation
3. This term refers to the underground site where an earthquake initiates, identifying the source of seismic activity, and it may also describe the core of an underground nuclear explosion

Etymology: Hypocenter is a modern scientific coinage, built from two much older pieces. The first is the Greek prefix "hupo-", meaning "under" or "beneath," and the second is "center," which comes from the Greek "kentron," meaning a sharp point or the point of a compass, passed through Latin "centrum" and Middle French "centre" before reaching Middle English. Put together, the word describes the point beneath the surface where an earthquake begins, as opposed to the epicenter, the spot directly above it on the ground. The compound is a clear example of how scientists assembled terms from classical building blocks when they needed names for things the ancients never imagined. Nobody in antiquity spoke of underground earthquake origins, so the word has no ancient use; it was assembled in modern times from the Greek prefix and the English word "center." The plural "hypocenters" is simply the regular English plural of "hypocenter," used when discussing several earthquakes or several focal points.