Tectonic means having to do with the great moving plates of the crust. Tectonic plates, tectonic activity, a tectonic shift.
The plates move a few centimetres a year, about as fast as a fingernail grows, and everything from mountains to earthquakes follows from where they meet. A tectonic shift is the standard metaphor for a fundamental change. Note that the Greek means pertaining to building, from tekton, a carpenter.
1adjectivetectonicHaving to do with the moving plates of the crust.
“Earthquakes are common in Japan because several tectonic plates meet beneath it.”
tectonic is a quality of the earth's crust.
Greek tektonikos means pertaining to building, from tekton, a carpenter. Architect and technical come from the same making.
Ancient Greek
τεκτονικός — pertaining to building
Latin
tectonicus
English, today
tectonic
1650s, in sense of building, from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (“pertaining to building”), from Ancient Greek τέκτων (“carpenter, joiner, maker”), from Proto-Indo-European teḱ- (“to make”) (from which also texture). In sense of geology, attested 1894. by surface analysis, τέκτων + -ic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA