Eureka (word)

Eureka is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is a transliteration of an exclamation attributed to Ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes.

"Eureka" comes from the Ancient Greek word heúrēka, meaning "I have found (it)", which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb heuriskō "I find". It is closely related to heuristic, which refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery.

The accent of the English word is on the second syllable, following Latin rules of accent, which require that a penult (next-to-last syllable) must be accented if it contains a long vowel. In the Greek pronunciation, the first syllable has a high pitch accent, because the Ancient Greek rules of accent do not force accent to the penult unless the ultima (last syllable) has a long vowel. The long vowels in the first two syllables would sound like a double stress to English ears (as in the phrase Maltese cat).

The initial /h/ is dropped in some European languages, including Spanish, Dutch, and English, but preserved in others, such as Finnish, Danish, and German.

The exclamation 'Eureka!' is famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" (i.e. twice) after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. (This relation is not what is known as Archimedes' principle—that deals with the upthrust experienced by a body immersed in a fluid.) He then realized that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked.

...
Wikipedia