Energeia. Energy derives from the ancient Greek word energeia, coined by Aristotle to serve as a technical term in his philosophy of being (ontology). The energeia of a thing is the activity of that thing being what it is. By referring to a mode of being in the world, then, energeia, when it was borrowed into the English language as ‘energy’ in the early sixteenth century, and before it was borrowed into the language of science in the early nineteenth century, became a common way to speak about the inherent nature of things, whether a nation, person, poem, idea, or a cultural and natural landscape that is a world apart.