'Palimpsest' is Greek for 'scraped again' — medieval scribes recycled parchment by scrubbing off old text.
A manuscript page that has been scraped clean and reused; something bearing visible traces of earlier forms.
From Latin 'palimpsestus,' from Greek 'palimpsestos' (scraped again, rubbed clean again), a compound of 'palin' (again, back) + 'psestos' (scraped, rubbed), from 'psen' (to rub, to scrape). The Greek 'palin' (again) derives from PIE *kwel- (to turn, to revolve — also in 'cycle,' 'wheel,' 'pole'), with the sense 'turning back.' Medieval scribes, facing chronic parchment shortages, scraped or washed manuscripts clean and reused them, creating
Modern imaging technology can now recover the erased 'undertext,' including lost works of Archimedes and Cicero.