Question

Hydrosphere comes from the _____ word ‘hudor’ meaning water.
A) Greek
B) Latin
C) Spanish
D) Italian

Answer 1

Hint: It is a part of the 24 official languages of the European Union.
It has the longest written history of over 3,500 years, which is more than that of any other Indo-European language.

Complete answer:
The word ‘hydrosphere’ is derived from the Greek word ‘hudor’, which means ‘water’. The word ‘hydro’ stands for water and is used in many other English terms such as; hydrophobic, hydrophilic, hydraulic, hydro-power etc. The ‘sphere’ stands for a ‘round, ball-like, spherical shape’.

The word ‘hydrosphere’ refers to the ‘entire combined mass of water found on our planet, earth. It includes all the water on the surface as well as under the surface of the earth.’ The estimated volume of our hydrosphere is 1,386 million cubic kilometers (which includes ocean, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice caps, ice sheets, glaciers etc). 97.5% of all the water on earth is in the form of saltwater. Only 2.5% of the total water on earth accounts for freshwater.

Out of this freshwater, 68.9% of it is the form of ice and is permanently situated in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The remaining 30.8% is under the earth in the form of ground water and the last 0.3% is the water that is easily accessible to man in the form of rivers, lakes and streams.

Thus, the correct answer is Option (A) Greek i.e, Hydrosphere is derived from the Greek word ‘hudor’, meaning 'water’.

Note: The Greek language has given rise to many scientific and even basic English terms over the years. For e.g
- Democracy – comes from the Greek words demos meaning ‘people’ and kratos meaning ‘power’.
- Planet – comes from the word planomai which means ‘to wander’.
- Any word beginning with ‘tele’ denotes distance. For e.g. telescope, teleport, television etc.