statistic: [18] The term statistics [18] etymologically denotes the ‘science of the state’. It comes from statisticus ‘of state affairs’, a modern Latin coinage based on classical Latin status (source of English state). It was the 18thcentury German political scientist Aschenwall who brought it (in German statistisch) into general usage, in the specific sense ‘of the collection and evaluation of data (particularly numerical data) relating to the study of the state and its functions and institutions’. By the 1830s it had broadened out into its modern general sense. English acquired the word from German. => state[statistic etymology, statistic origin, 英语词源]