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A stylus, plural styli or styluses,〔(Wiktionary )〕〔(The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2009, Houghton Mifflin Company )〕 is a writing utensil, or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision when using touchscreens. It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styluses are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely used writing tool is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille. Styluses were first used by the ancient Mesopotamians in order to write in cuneiform. Egyptians (Middle Kingdom) and the Minoans of Crete (Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic) made styluses in various materials: reeds that grew on the sides of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and in marshes and down to Egypt where the Egyptians used styluses from sliced reeds with sharp points; bone and metal styluses were also used. Cuneiform was entirely based on the "wedge-shaped" mark that the end of a cut reed made when pushed into a clay tablet; from Latin ''cuneus'' = wedge. The linear writings of Crete in the first half of the second millennium BC which were made on clay tablets that were left to dry in the sun until they became "leather" hard before being incised by the stylus. The linear nature of the writing was also dictated by the use of the stylus. In Western Europe styluses were widely used until the late Middle Ages. For learning purposes the stylus was gradually replaced by a writing slate. From the mid-14th century improved water-powered paper mills produced large and cheap quantities of paper and the wax tablet and stylus disappeared completely from daily life. ==Etymology== The word "stylus" (along with the word "style") comes from the Latin word ''stilus'' meaning: "a stake; a pointed instrument, used by the Romans, for writing upon wax tablets,"〔(ND.edu ), University of Notre Dame online latin dictionary〕 which derives from the Greek word στύλος meaning "pillar" and "stile for writing on waxed tablets."〔(Tufts.edu ), στύλος at Liddell & Scott〕 A different suggestion is that the word does not derive from the Greek word "στῦλος", but that it has a common root with the Greek verb "στίζω" (meaning "mark"). According to the 1875 London Dictionary of Greek & Roman Antiquities a Stylus is "an object tapering like an architectural column; a metal instrument resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing or recording impressions upon waxed tablets. It signifies: "An iron instrument (Ov. Met. IX.521; Martial, XIV.21), resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing upon waxed tablets (Plaut. Bacch. IV.4.63; Plin. H.N. XXXIV.14). At one end it was sharpened to a point for scratching the characters upon the wax (Quintil. i.1 §27), while the other end being flat and circular served to render the surface of the tablets smooth again, and so to obliterate what had been written. Thus, vertere stilum means to erase, and hence to correct, as in the well-known precept saepe stilum vertas (Hor. Sat. 1.10.72; Cic. Verr. II.41)." There exists minor controversy about the correct pluralization of "stylus". Some assert that "stylus" is a direct loanword from Latin and should be pluralised as "styli". However, "stylus" is an English word based on the Latin word "stilus", and is more appropriately pluralised in English as "styluses". Occasionally the pluralisation "stylii" is seen. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「stylus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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