Origins
The word 'technology' joins two Greek roots of great cultural importance: 'tekhnē' (τέχνη, art, skill, craft) and 'logos' (λόγος, word, discourse, study, reason). The Greek compound 'tekhnologia' (τεχνολογία) meant 'the systematic treatment of an art' — a rational, organized account of how a practical skill works.
Greek 'tekhnē' was a broad concept that encompassed any learned skill or systematic body of practical knowledge. It included what we would call 'arts' (painting, sculpture, poetry, music), 'crafts' (weaving, pottery, carpentry), 'professions' (medicine, rhetoric, navigation), and 'sciences' (when applied practically). The Greeks drew an important distinction between 'tekhnē' (practical, productive knowledge — knowing how to make or do something) and 'epistēmē' (theoretical knowledge — knowing why things are as they are). Both were valued, but epistēmē was considered higher.
The word 'technology' entered English in the early seventeenth century with a meaning close to the Greek original: a systematic discourse on the arts, or the study of the practical arts collectively. This academic sense persisted for over a century. It was during and after the Industrial Revolution (late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) that 'technology' shifted toward its modern meaning: the practical application of scientific knowledge, especially through industrial processes, machinery, and engineered systems.
Greek Origins
By the twentieth century, 'technology' had acquired connotations of modernity, progress, and (sometimes) dehumanization that would have been alien to the Greek concept of tekhnē. The phrase 'information technology' (IT), coined in the 1950s, extended the word into the domain of computing and data processing. 'Biotechnology,' 'nanotechnology,' and other compounds further expanded its range. Today, 'technology' is arguably the single most culturally charged word in the English language — embodying hopes, fears, and assumptions about the relationship between human knowledge and human life.
The Greek root 'tekhnē' produces several other English words. 'Technique' (a method of performing a practical task) entered English through French. 'Technical' (relating to a particular skill or practical art) and 'technicality' follow from it. 'Architect' combines Greek 'arkhē' (chief, first) with 'tektōn' (builder, carpenter) — a related but distinct root from 'tekhnē.' 'Polytechnic' (many arts) describes an institution teaching multiple technical subjects. 'Technocrat' (one who governs through technical expertise) was coined in the early twentieth century.
The suffix '-logy' from 'logos' connects 'technology' to the vast family of English words denoting systematic study or discourse: biology, theology, psychology, ecology, geology, and over a hundred others. In each case, '-logy' implies that the subject deserves and supports rational, systematic investigation — that it has a logos, a rational account to be given.