Eureka (word)

Eureka (héurēka) is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is a transliteration of an exclamation attributed to Ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes. "Eureka" comes from the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα heúrēka, meaning "I have found (it)", which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb εὑρίσκω heurískō "I find". It is closely related to heuristic, which refers to experience-based techniques for problem-solving, learning, and discovery. The accent of the English word is on the second syllable, following Latin rules of accent, which require that a penult (next-to-last syllable) must be accented if it contains a long vowel. In the Greek pronunciation, the first syllable has a high pitch accent, because the Ancient Greek rules of accent do not force accent to the penult unless the ultima (last syllable) has a long vowel. The long vowels in the first two syllables would sound like a double stress to English ears (as in the phrase Maltese cat). The initial /h/ is dropped in modern Greek and in several other European languages, including Catalan, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English, but preserved in others, such as Finnish, Danish, and German. Archimedes#Archimedes and the gold crown and Density#Volume vs. density; volume of an irregular shape The exclamation "Eureka!" is attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. (This relation is not what is known as Archimedes' principle—that deals with the upthrust experienced by a body immersed in a fluid.) He then realized that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse.