The art form cinema meaning motion pictures first appears in 1908 as a generalized short form of cinematograph, a specific technology referenced where we’d now say “movie”. (Other contemporary technologies were vitascope and animatograph. Compare calling a bandage a band-aid or a copier a xerox.) The cinématographe was named by its inventors, French photographers Auguste and Louis Lumière, in 1895. It’s based on the Ancient Greek words κίνημα (kínēma), meaning “motion”; and γράφω (gráphō), meaning “write”, or in this case “record”. Other English words descended from κίνημα include kinetic and kinematics.

Movie theaters being called cinemas is from 1911. Cinematic meaning “movie-like” is from 1913. The more specific art form cinematography is first described in 1920. Montage is a loanword from French montage, meaning “editing”, from 1930. Cinematic universe is from 2011, although the concept of a coherent world shared by unrelated films has been around since the classic horror universe (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man) of the 1940s.