the.com/environment
The only roommate you never chose and can never evict.
means The surrounding conditions, natural or social, that shape and affect how a living thing exists and behaves.
from Traces to the Old French 'environner' — to encircle or surround — itself built from 'viron,' meaning a circuit or circle, related to 'virer,' to turn. So the word's bones are literally about turning around something, circling it. English picked up 'environ' (to surround) first, then nouned it into 'environment' by the 1600s to mean the encircling conditions themselves — the things that turn and close around you, whether you invited them or not.
- word drift
- Meant 'surroundings' generally until the 1800s
- ecology link
- Became synonymous with nature only recently
- scale problem
- Applies equally to a petri dish and a planet
- legal debut
- US EPA founded 1970, formalized the modern meaning