Tag: language

Hold Up

Atlas, found at http://athahualpa.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/mercator-museum-st-niklaas/
I have little to add, I just thought this was a neat bit of word-history:

Atlas:
“collection of maps in a volume,” 1636, first in reference to the English translation of “Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi” (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594), who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.

etymonline.com