Q: I find the singular “dynamic” is increasingly being used as a noun. For example, “the meeting had a strange dynamic.” I’m OK with “dynamics” as a noun, but how did “dynamic” get that status?
A: The use of the singular noun “dynamic” for something that influences growth, change, progress, and so on has been around since the late 19th century and is standard English.
We find the usage a bit jargony, but it’s recognized by all the standard dictionaries we regularly consult. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines it as “a force or factor that controls or influences a process of growth, change, interaction, or activity.”
M-W cites a review by the pediatrician and microbiologist June E. Osborn in The New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1996: “Denial has always been the most devastating social and political dynamic of the AIDS epidemic.”
An earlier sense of “dynamic” came into English in the late 18th century, borrowed from the French adjective dynamique (dynamic). The French term comes from the Greek adjective δυναμικός (dunamikos, powerful) and noun δύναμις (dunamis, power or strength), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When the word first appeared in English, the OED says, it was a plural noun for “the branch of Physics which treats of the action of Force: in earlier use restricted to the action of force in producing or varying motion.”
The dictionary’s earliest citation is from The New Royal Encyclopaedia Londinensis; or, Complete, Modern and Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1788), by George Selby Howard:
“Dynamics is the science of moving powers; more particularly of the motion of bodies that mutually act on one another.”
In the early 19th century, the OED says, the plural noun took on the sense of “the moving physical or moral forces in any sphere, or the laws by which they act.”
The first OED citation is from On the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God (1833), a treatise by the Church of Scotland minister and social reformer Thomas Chambers: “To unsettle the moral dynamics which nature hath established there.”
The singular noun “dynamic” appeared in the late 19th century in the same sense as “dynamics” where the plural term means a branch of physics. The first OED citation is from an 1873 paper on mathematics:
“The science which teaches under what circumstances particular motions take place … is called Dynamic … It is divided into two parts, Static … and Kinetic” (Mathematical Papers, 1882, by William Kingdon Clifford).
The singular noun soon took on the sense of an “energizing or motive force”—the meaning you’re noticing. The OED’s earliest citation is from a book that examines Darwinism in a Christian context:
“The Struggle for Life, as life’s dynamic, can never wholly cease.” From The Ascent of Man, 1894, by Henry Drummond, a Scottish evangelist, biologist, and writer. (The book was based on Drummond’s 1893 lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston.)
As for the adjective “dynamic,” the dictionary says it first appeared in the early 19th century, when it meant “of or pertaining to force producing motion: often opposed to static.”
The first OED citation is from an 1827 paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the national academy of science in the United Kingdom.
In the paper, Davies Gilbert, the society’s president, notes that the Scottish engineer James Watt introduced the term “duty” (the useful effect of an engine in work performed) “for what has been called in other countries the dynamic unit.”
In the mid-19th century, Oxford says, the adjective took on the figurative sense of “active, potent, energetic, effective, forceful.” The first citation is from English Traits (1856), Ralph Waldo Emerson’s portrait of the English people.
In commenting on their wills, letters, public documents, proverbs, and speech, Emerson writes, “Their dynamic brains hurled off their words, as the revolving stone hurls off scraps of grit.”
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