Nanoengineering

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The field involving the design and manipulation of materials and devices at the scale of nanometers
2. A branch of engineering focused on creating and controlling structures and systems at the molecular or atomic scale
3. The practice of engineering that deals with constructing and assembling components on a scale of billionths of a meter

Etymology: Nanoengineering is a compound built from "nano-" and "engineering," and the first of these carries a surprisingly small ancestry. "Nano-" traces back to the ancient Greek "nânos," meaning "dwarf," which passed into Latin as "nānus" with the same sense. Scientists later adopted it as a prefix meaning one billionth, so a word for building at the scale of billionths of a metre now grows from a Greek word for a small person. The second half, "engineering," is the older and more familiar part. It descends from "engineer," a word that once referred to someone who devised siege machines and military contrivances, and the "-ing" ending turns the activity into a noun naming the practice of that work. Joined to "nano-," the compound names the same craft of design and construction, now applied to structures measured in nanometres.