Seismology

One word on this list looks as if it belonged on a farm. Der Bebenherd is the point underground where the rock gave way, and an English reader tends to see a herd in it, as though the quake were a crowd of tremors on the move. It is nothing of the kind. A herd of cattle is die Herde, feminine and with a final -e; der Herd is the cooker in the kitchen, and in older German the hearth, the one place in the house where the fire is kept. From there it came to mean the seat of anything that spreads: der Brandherd is where a fire started, der Krankheitsherd the source of an infection, and der Unruheherd a trouble spot in the news. Read Herd as source and the seismologist’s sentence falls into place: Der Bebenherd lag in zehn Kilometern Tiefe. The point on the surface above it is das Epizentrum.