English
anarboricity
From an- + arboricity.
Formed from an- + arboricity
Proto-Indo-European *h₂en- ‘on, onto’
Proto-Germanic *ana- ‘on’
Proto-West Germanic *ana- ‘Forming verbs and adjectives from participles…’
English an-
Proto-Indo-European *h₃erdʰ- ‘high’
Proto-Indo-European *h₃r̥dʰōs
Proto-Italic *arðōs ‘tree’
Old Latin arbōs
Latin arbor ‘tree’
English arboricity
The story
Coined by Ronald C. Read; the etymologically inaccurate Greek prefix an- was chosen to achieve a pun on the name of Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is based.
Today it means
noun The maximum number of edge-disjoint cyclic subgraphs of a graph G whose union is G.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / anarboricity