Phenakistes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An early nineteenth-century optical toy with a spinning disc of drawings viewed through slits to create the illusion of motion
2. A primitive animation device in which a rotating card of sequential images, seen through slots in a second disc, appears to move
3. A Victorian-era spinning apparatus that produced moving pictures from a series of drawings glimpsed through a rotating slotted disc

Etymology: Before cinema, a spinning disc could make a drawing move. The device was built from a card disc with a sequence of slightly different figures around its rim and a row of narrow slits cut through it. Looking through the slits at a mirror while spinning the disc made the figures appear to animate. The name combines the Greek "phenax," meaning "deceiver" or "impostor," with "skopein," "to look at" or "to view." The name thus describes what the device does, a deliberate coinage for an optical toy that cheated the eye. The word for this kind of device is a modern coinage from classical roots, not an ancient Greek term for anything like it. The Greek "phenax" itself was used of a cheat or a false pretender, which gives the new term its sense of a viewer being fooled.