Question: Is the singular term “dynamic” now being used as a noun? For example, “the meeting had a strange dynamic.” I am used to “dynamics” as a noun, but when did “dynamic” become a noun?
Answer: The use of the singular noun “dynamic” to refer to something that influences growth, change, progress, etc. has been in use since the late 19th century and is considered standard English.
While some may find this usage to be jargon, it is recognized by all the standard dictionaries we consult regularly. For instance, Merriam-Webster defines it as “a force or factor that controls or influences a process of growth, change, interaction, or activity.”
Merriam-Webster references a review by pediatrician and microbiologist June E. Osborn in The New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1996, where she states, “Denial has always been the most devastating social and political dynamic of the AIDS epidemic.”
The earlier sense of “dynamic” was borrowed from the French adjective dynamique in the late 18th century. The French term itself comes from the Greek words δυναμικός (dunamikos, powerful) and δύναμις (dunamis, power or strength), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Initially, when “dynamic” entered the English language, it was used as a plural noun to describe the branch of physics that deals with the action of force, specifically in producing or varying motion.
The OED provides the earliest citation from The New Royal Encyclopaedia Londinensis; or, Complete, Modern and Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1788) by George Selby Howard, which states, “Dynamics is the science of moving powers, more particularly of the motion of bodies that mutually act on one another.”
By the early 19th century, the plural noun “dynamics” took on the meaning of the moving physical or moral forces in any sphere, or the laws by which they operate.
The first usage of the singular noun “dynamic” in a similar sense to “dynamics” came about in the late 19th century, where the plural term refers to a branch of physics. The initial citation in the OED is from a 1873 mathematical paper:
“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 evolved to represent an “energizing or motive force,” as seen in the quote from The Ascent of Man (1894) by Henry Drummond, a Scottish evangelist, biologist, and writer.
As for the adjective “dynamic,” the OED notes its first appearance in the early 19th century, when it meant “related to force producing motion, often contrasted with static.”
The initial OED citation is from an 1827 paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, where Davies Gilbert, the society’s president, mentions the Scottish engineer James Watt introducing the term “duty” for what is known as the dynamic unit in other countries.
In the mid-19th century, the adjective took on a figurative sense of “active, potent, energetic, effective, forceful.” The first citation is from English Traits (1856) by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emerson describes the English people’s wills, letters, public documents, proverbs, and speech, stating, “Their dynamic brains hurled off their words, as the revolving stone hurls off scraps of grit.”
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