Dynamics

How to spell dynamics

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dynamics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dynamics mean?

1. nounThe forces or patterns of interaction that drive how a group, system, or situation behaves and changes.
2. nounThe branch of physics concerned with bodies in motion and the forces that produce or change that motion.
3. nounThe variation in loudness and softness within a piece of music.

Dynamics in a sentence

• The team dynamics shifted as soon as the new manager arrived.

• The engineering course covers fluid dynamics in its second term.

• The conductor asked the orchestra to exaggerate the dynamics in the final movement.

• Economists study the dynamics of supply and demand in a recession.

• Calculating the rocket's trajectory relies on classical dynamics.

• Careful attention to dynamics kept the quiet passages from sounding flat.

Where does dynamics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek dunamis, which literally meant 'power', 'force', or 'capacity', the same root that gives us 'dynamite' and 'dynamo'. From dunamis came the adjective dunamikos, meaning 'powerful' or 'relating to force'. French scientists adapted this into dynamique in the seventeenth century, and the term entered English as a label for the branch of physics that studies bodies in motion under the action of forces. By the nineteenth century the meaning had widened well beyond mechanics, so that we now speak of the dynamics of a group, a market, or a relationship, meaning the forces and patterns of interaction at work within it. The kept-from-Greek spelling explains the trap: the unstressed first vowel sounds like 'dye' but is written with a 'y', and the same 'y' returns in the middle, so the word carries two of them where writers often expect an 'i'.

How the word is built

• dynam- (from Greek dunamis: power, force)
• -ic (relating to)
• -s (plural/field-of-study marker)