TITLE: What does the word "symplectic" mean? 
QUESTION [25 upvotes]: I know the definition of symplectic structure, symplectic group, and so on. But what does the word "symplectic" itself mean? 
Meta question: I have many other mathematical words whose etymologies are obscure to me. Is it OK for me to ask one question per such word?

REPLY [3 votes]: From Pietro Majer's comments I learn that "symplectic" is the past participle of a classic Greek verb which means "to embrace".
Consequently I would just remark then how surprising is the effectiveness of this adjective to reflect the pervasiveness of the ideas from symplectic geometry in modern mathematics, which interconnect many different subjects.
Infact, from the introduction to the paper "Symplectic Geometry" by A.Weinstein, I quote:

I think it is not unfair to say that symplectic geometry is of interest today, not so much as a theory in itself, but rather because of a series of remarkable "transforms" which connect it with various areas of analysis.