A garden gnome
4 August 2025
Just because two words are spelled the same does not mean they share an etymology. Often they do, but it is an unreliable guide, for sometimes the different meanings have wildly different origins. Such is the case with gnome. Most of us are familiar with gnome meaning a diminutive creature or spirit, associated with the earth and often guarding treasure. But a gnome can also be a saying or maxim, a pearl of wisdom. These two meanings are etymologically unrelated.
This latter sense is older. It comes from the Greek γνώμη (gnome), meaning thought, judgment, opinion. The plural γνῶμαι (gnomai) means sayings or maxims. It starts appearing in English in the mid sixteenth century. Here is an early example from Richard Rainolde’s 1563 Foundacioun of Rhetorike
A sentence is an Oracion, in fewe woordes, shewyng a godlie precept of life, exhorting or diswadyng: the Grekes dooe call godly preceptes, by the name of Gnome, or Gnomon, whiche is asmoche to saie, a rule or square, to direct any thyng by, for by them, the life of manne is framed to all singularitie.
The term for the diminutive creature is first found in the writings of Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim, c. 1493–1541). Paracelsus wrote in Latin, and where he got the term is unknown. He may have just invented it, or perhaps it is an error for the Greek *γεωνόμος (*geonomus), an unattested word that would mean earth-dweller. This sense of gnome first appears in English in 1657 in a translation of one of Paracelsus’s works by Henry Pinnell:
Magicall tempests rise out of the aire, and there end: not as if the Element of aire begot them, but rather the spirit of the aire. The fire conceives some things bodily, as the Earth doth the Gnomes.
A glossary at the end of Pinnell’s translation has this:
Gnomes, Gnomi, are little men, dwarfs, or rather spirits with bodies living under the earth, Pigmies scarce halfe a foot high.
So remember to take care when assuming that words that are spelled and pronounced the same have the same etymology.
Sources:
Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1900: s.v. gnome, n.1, gnome, n.2, gnomic, adj.1 & n., gnomish, adj., gnosis, n.; 1993: gnomic, adj.2 & n.,
Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim). The First Book of Philosophy Written to the Athenians. H. Pinnell, trans. In Oswald Croll. Philosophy Reformed & Improved in Four Profound Tractates. H. Pinnell, trans. London: M.S. for Lodwick Lloyd, 1657, 19–20, 66. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Rainolde, Richard. A Booke Called Foundacioun of Rhetorike. London: John Kingston, 1563, fol. 20r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Photo credit: EddyDD, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work.