'anisotrope' originates from Greek, specifically the word 'anisotropēs', where 'an-' meant 'not', 'isos' meant 'equal', and 'tropos' meant 'turn' or 'direction'.

'anisotrope' changed from the Greek word 'anisotropēs' into New Latin/Neo-Greek technical usage and was adopted into modern scientific vocabulary (via European languages such as German and French) as 'anisotrope', eventually appearing in English as 'anisotrope'.

Initially it described the idea 'not the same in all directions' in Greek technical usage, and over time it retained that core sense in modern scientific English to mean an object or material with direction-dependent properties.