Other forms: psychologies
Psychology is the study of the mind: what people think and feel, and why they do what they do. Rats learning a maze, a questionnaire about how you sleep, a child watched through glass to see whether she can wait for a second sweet.
As a subject you study psychology, do a psychology degree, sit a psychology exam. The word also means the workings themselves: the psychology of a crowd, the psychology of a bully, reverse psychology on a toddler who will not put a coat on. A psychologist studies the mind, while a psychiatrist is a medical doctor who can prescribe drugs, and that difference matters. The adjective is psychological, as in a psychological thriller or psychological support after an accident. The p at the front is silent, and the stress lands on the second syllable.
1nounpsychologyThe study of the mind and of how people and animals behave.
“She teaches psychology at a university in Leeds.”
2nounparticularThe way a particular person or group thinks and feels.
“The book is about the psychology of people who join cults.”
psychology is a science.
Psychology reached English through French psychologie from Latin psychologia, built out of Ancient Greek psyche, 'soul', and -logia, 'study of'. It began, then, as the study of the soul, a Greek dress for the old book title de anima, 'on the soul'. Some credit the Latin coinage to a lost treatise by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulic, though other scholars doubt it; by the 1570s the word was already in use.
Ancient Greek
ψυχή — soul
la-ren
psychologia
French
psychologie
English, today
psychology
Built from
From French psychologie, from la-ren psychologia, from Ancient Greek ψυχή (“soul”) + -λογία (“study of”), equivalent to psycho- + -logy. The Latin term is believed by some to have been coined in a lost treatise by Croatian humanist Marko Marulić (1450–1524), but this is disputed by other scholars. It is 1570s, at which time it was apparently already current, and may be a Hellenization of the established expression dē animā (“on the soul”) in titles.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA