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Ergonomics
Definitions
- 1 The science of the design of equipment, especially so as to reduce operator fatigue, discomfort and injury. uncountable
"Ergonomics is increasingly important in office-product design."
- 2 the branch of engineering science in which biological science is used to study the relation between workers and their environments wordnet
- 3 Political economy. rare, uncountable
"As the titlepage of this latter portion of his work indicates, M. Courcelle Seneuil confines himself to political economy considered as a practical science, or, as he chooses to call it, to ergonomics."
Etymology
From ergo- (prefix indicating work) + -nomics (suffix indicating the rules of a discipline), probably modelled after Polish ergonomia (“ergonomics”) (used by Polish scientist Wojciech Jastrzębowski (1799–1882) in an 1857 article), from Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon, “work”) + νόμος (nómos, “custom; law, ordinance”). The English word is widely regarded as having been introduced by British psychologist K. F. Hywel Murrell at a meeting at the Admiralty in London in July 1949, which led to the establishment of the Ergonomics Research Society (now The Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors) on 17 September 1949.
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Unscramble this word: ergonomics