We often get corrected by those who are sticklers for old English! At Wireless, we use Antennas as the plural. Most dictionaries define Antennas as the plural of aerials and Antennae for the pairs of feelers on the head of an insect.

Regardless of modern dictionary definitions, the original latin form is of course antennae. And the derivation? Apparently Guglielimo Marconi himself first used the term in a lecture in 1909, some eight years after his first successful transmissions across the Atlantic. It is believed that the reason Marconi chose this term was that the antenna he referred to in this lecture was shaped much like a sail, with the Latin word “antema” (sic.) indicating the pole of the triangular sails on some Mediterranean vessels of the time. He continued to use the word in subsequent papers and the word with its current meaning was born.

And aerial? That is simple enough, with the first antennas (or antennae if you prefer) used by Marconi being elevated wire systems. Marconi used the descriptive term aerial before moving to the new term, antenna, in later papers.

Reprinted from RFI Wave Newsletter