1530s, "general course of instruction," from Modern Latin encyclopaedia (c. 1500), thought to be a false reading by Latin authors of Greek enkyklios paideia taken as "general education," but literally "training in a circle," i.e. the "circle" of arts and sciences, the essentials of a liberal education; from enkyklios "circular," also "general" (from en "in;" see in + kyklos "circle;" from PIE root *kwel- (1) "revolve, move round") + paideia "education, child-rearing," from pais (genitive paidos) "child" (see pedo-).

Modern sense of "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, often applied specifically to the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (1751-65). Related: Encyclopedist.

1816, from encyclopedia + -ic.

also cyclopaedia, 1728, a shortening of encyclopedia. Related: Encyclopedic, encyclopaedic.

see encyclopedia. The Latin spelling survives as a variant because many of the most prominent ones (such as Britannica) have Latin names.

also *kwelə-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "revolve, move round; sojourn, dwell."

It forms all or part of: accolade; ancillary; atelo-; bazaar; bicycle; bucolic; chakra; chukker; collar; collet; colonial; colony; cult; cultivate; culture; cyclamen; cycle; cyclo-; cyclone; cyclops; decollete; encyclical; encyclopedia; entelechy; epicycle; hauberk; hawse; inquiline; Kultur; lapidocolous; nidicolous; palimpsest; palindrome; palinode; pole (n.2) "ends of Earth's axis;" pulley; rickshaw; talisman; teleology; telic; telophase; telos; torticollis; wheel.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit cakram "circle, wheel," carati "he moves, wanders;" Avestan caraiti "applies himself," c'axra "chariot, wagon;" Greek kyklos "circle, wheel, any circular body, circular motion, cycle of events,"polos "a round axis" (PIE *kw- becomes Greek p- before some vowels), polein "move around;" Latin colere "to frequent, dwell in, to cultivate, move around," cultus "tended, cultivated," hence also "polished," colonus "husbandman, tenant farmer, settler, colonist;" Lithuanian kelias "a road, a way;" Old Norse hvel, Old English hweol "wheel;" Old Church Slavonic kolo, Old Russian kolo, Polish koło, Russian koleso "a wheel."

ancient region southeast of the Caspian Sea, from Greek Hyrkania, said to be from an Indo-European *verkana "country of wolves" [Zonn, I., et al., "The Caspian Sea Encyclopedia," 2010]. "Hyrcania was the wild region par excellence to the ancients" [OED]. Related: Hyrcanian.

1922, verbal noun from broadcast (v.).

Broadcasting, as distinct from wireless communication, may be said to have come into being about 1920. It may be defined as the systematic diffusion, by radio telephony, of music, lectures, drama, humour, news and information bulletins, speeches and ceremonies, pictures and other matter susceptible of appreciation by a scattered audience, individually or in groups, with appropriate receiving apparatus. [ Encyclopedia Britannica, 1929]

 in general, "the repetition of endings in words, rhyme and near rhyme," but also, in palaeography, a form of scribal error which occurs "when two words/phrases/lines end with the same sequence of letters. The scribe, having finished copying the first, skips to the second, omitting all intervening words" [Robert B. Waltz, "The Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism," 2013]; Greek, literally "same ending;" see homo- (1) "the same" + telos.

1974, introduced with the 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for the part of the encyclopedia in which information was presented in full essays, from macro- + ending from encyclopaedia.

"pretender to piety, religious hypocrite," 1670s, from name of the principal character in the comedy of the same name by Molière (1664), apparently from Old French tartuffe "truffle" (see truffle), perhaps chosen for suggestion of concealment in Tartuffe's hypocrisy, or "in allusion to the fancy that truffles were a diseased product of the earth" [New International Encyclopedia, 1905]. Tartufo is said to have been the name of a hypocritical character in Italian comedy.