proprietary name for a form of cinema film projected on a wide, curved screen, 1951, from cinema + -rama. Purists point out that the proper formation would be *Cinorama.
Entries linking to cinerama
cinema n.
1899, "movie hall," from French cinéma, shortened from cinématographe "device for projecting a series of photographs in rapid succession so as to produce the illusion of movement," coined 1890s by Lumiere brothers, who invented the technology, from Latinized form of Greek kinēmat-, combining form of kinēma "movement," from kinein "to move" (from PIE root *keie- "to set in motion"). For the second element in the French compound, see -graphy.
The word was earlier in English in its fuller form, cinematograph (1896), but this has been displaced by the short form. Other old words for such a system were vitascope (Edison, 1895), animatograph (1898). The meaning "movies collectively, especially as an art form" recorded by 1914. Cinéma vérité is 1963, from French.
-rama
noun suffix meaning "sight, view, spectacular display or instance of," 1824, abstracted from panorama (q.v.), ultimately from Greek horama "sight, spectacle, that which is seen."