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Word History: Xylophone is a word one expects to encounter in the X section of any children's alphabet book. It is there because it is one of the few words beginning with x that a child or most anyone else would know. Recognition of xerophagy, “the eating of dry food, especially as a form of fasting practiced in the early Christian Church and chiefly in the Eastern churches today,” or xylotomy, “the preparation of sections of wood for microscopic study” is not to be expected. Most of the English words beginning with x, including these obscurities, are of Greek origin, the x, pronounced (z), representing the Greek letter xi. In the case of xylophone, xylo- is a form meaning “wood,” derived from Greek xulon, “wood,” and -phone represents Greek phn, “voice, sound,” the same element found in words such as telephone, microphone, and megaphone. Our famous x word is first recorded in the April 7, 1866, edition of the Athenaeum: “A prodigy . . . who does wonderful things with little drumsticks on a machine of wooden keys, called the ‘xylophone.’”
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