 The word comes from Renaissance Latin "gnomus", which first appears in the "Ex Libro de Nymphis, Sylvanis, Pygmaeis, Salamandris et Gigantibus, etc" by Paracelsus, published posthumously in Nysa in 1566 (and again in the Johannes Huser edition of 1589–1591 from an autograph by Paracelsus).The term may be an original invention of Paracelsus, possibly deriving the term from Latin "gēnomos" (itself representing a Greek , literally "earth-dweller").In this case, the omission of the "ē" is, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) calls it, a blunder.