'Cause people are lazy, and gravity is easier to say. /s
Per Wikipedia,
In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas ‘weight’)…
Thread over
Its a patnou question, so they can always be answered by a quick ddg search.
+1 for DDG search
In American English it’s Gravytas
Gravity? Oh! You mean mavity.
Sometimes I think this place needs a rule about doing at least one search with any engine before posting.
Why not mavity?
Goodness, thank you, I thought I was going insane. Why does everybody else spell it weird? Is this some Mandela effect?
If it was called Newtonity someone would ask why not Gravity.
Googling says gravity comes:
directly from Latin gravitatem (nominative gravitas) “weight, heaviness, pressure,” from gravis “heavy” (from PIE root *gwere- (1) “heavy”). The scientific sense of “downward acceleration of terrestrial bodies due to gravitation of the Earth” first recorded 1620s.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/gravity
When in doubt, blame Latin.
OP, let me introduce you to Wiktionary, where you can look up all sorts of words, “gravity” included.
It can be a little shaky around the fringes (obscure words; rare or slang usages) and with languages not closely related to English, but it’s an excellent resource for when you want to know why a word is the way it is. Or at least to find out that we don’t know for sure where some words come from. Gravity isn’t one of those, though.
You may also like to know that there is a metric physical unit named after Newton, so his name does get used in gravity-related concepts. At time of writing, the Wikipedia article for the Gravity of Earth mentions the unit in the first couple of paragraphs.
Grabity? Cause it grabs you/stuff
Something serious can be heavy, grave -> gravity. Vity is not a word. Newtonian force would be a good name if it wasn’t already something else.
I guess because gravity meant something like “weighty” in a behavioural sense. So that objects having gravity, would have the meaning of the “weightyness” of something.
