Phys. [L. cerebellum, dim. of cerebrum brain; in ancient Lat. used only in sense ‘small brain,’ and in Romanic substituted for the lost primitive cerebrum: cf. It. cervello, Cat. cervell, Pr. cervel, OF. cervel mod.F. cerveau, also (from pl. cerebella), OF. cervele, mod.F. cervelle, brain. But the mediæval translators of Galen and Aristotle used cerebellum to render the παρεγκεφαλίς, as distinguished from the ἐγκέφαλον or cerebrum. For this sense the Romanic langs. have formed a secondary dim. F. cervelet, It. cervelletto.
Galen, περὶ ἀνατ. ἐπιγερ. (Kühn 714) has ὀπίσθον δὲ λέγειν ἐγκέφαλον ἢ ἐγκράνιον ἢ παρεγκεφάλιδα διαφέρει οὐδέν, which the Old Latin transl. renders ‘posterius cerebrum, vocesne cerebellum, Encranium, vel parencephalidem, nihil interest.’]
The little or hinder brain; the mass of nervous matter forming the posterior part of the brain, situated behind and below the cerebrum, and above the medulla oblongata, and divided, like the cerebrum, into two ‘hemispheres,’ one on each side.
1565. J. Hall, Anat., III. i. The fourth [ventricle] is behynde, in an other lyttle brayne called also in Latyne by diminution Cerebellum, and of the Grecians Parencephalis.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 432. The Cerebellum that is, the backeward or after-braine.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 302. His placing the Spirits to serve to voluntary actions in the Cerebrum, and those that serve Involuntary in the Cerebellum, is a noble and useful discovery.
1778. Anatom. Dial., ii. (1785), 57. Wounds in the Cerebellum … are mortal.
1855. Bain, Senses & Int., I. ii. § 18. The cerebellum is looked upon as the centre of the higher order of combined actions.
