In linguistic terms, the impact of Ancient Greek on English is vast, despite the two languages historically having no direct contact. English is now home to many thousands of words derived at length from Ancient Greek roots, many of which have been adopted into English via French or Latin, or else have been deliberately coined from Greek sources by scientists and inventors. A full list of such coinages would include all -phobias (a term taken from the Greek word for ‘fear’, phobos) and all -ologies (from logos, meaning ‘word’) and -isms (from ismos, a Greek suffix used to form abstract nouns), plus a whole host of everyday words like card (chartes, ‘paper, papyrus’), history (historia, ‘study, learning through inquiry’), bicycle (kuklos, ‘wheel, circle’), diet (diaita), air (aer) and alphabet (coined, appropriately enough, from the first two Greek letters, alpha and beta).
The ten words in this chapter have all been coined not from some distant Greek root word but instead from an Ancient Greek place name. Examples like these are rare in English and, as can be seen even from this short collection, many of those that do exist are fairly obscure (BOEOTIAN, LACONIC, SYBARITE), typically making reference to some characteristic once associated with a specific region of Greece. Nonetheless, alongside rarities like these, this list also includes an intriguing handful of much more recognizable English words whose familiarity today belies their more exotic origins.
Use of the word attic as a noun denoting the topmost storey of a house is a surprisingly recent addition to the English language, dating from the early 1800s. Before then the term was a purely architectural one – an adjective used to describe a small decorative entablature or addition to the upper part of a column, or else a similarly decorative display or facade found above the main storey of a building, from where the modern sense of the word has since developed. Architectural features like these were once particularly associated with the Greek region of Attica, from where the term is originally derived.
An unusual sixteenth-century word for a dullard or an ignorant, dim-witted person, the word Boeotian (pronounced ‘bee-ocean’) derives from the name of Boeotia, a central district of Greece just north of Athens, which was historically renowned for its supposedly stupid populace. This fairly derogatory association is believed to stem from the region’s proximity to the much more cosmopolitan city of Athens, whose relatively cultured inhabitants presumably enjoyed looking down on their more rustic and unsophisticated neighbours to the north.
First recorded in English in the sixteenth century, the word chestnut (as well as the much earlier chesteine, an old-fashioned name for the chestnut tree itself) is believed to be derived from Castana, the name of a town in Thessaly where chestnuts were presumably once widely cultivated. Like the brazil nut, however, it now seems likely that the town took its name from the nuts that grew there rather than the other way around, but either way the Latin term castanea, which is today used as the name of the genus to which chestnut trees belong, is generally taken to mean ‘Castanian nut’.
The word currant dates from the fourteenth century, when the raisins of Corauntz, literally the ‘raisins of Corinth’, began to be sold in England for the very first time. As the name suggests, the fruits were once famously imported from Corinth in central Greece, and over time this name simply developed into the word as it is today. Blackcurrants and redcurrants, meanwhile, both derived their names from the English word currant in the early seventeenth century.
Denoting a distrustful or sceptical attitude, the term cynicism derives from the Cynics of Ancient Greece, the followers of the fourth-century BC philosopher Antisthenes, who shunned power and wealth in favour of a simpler life of virtue, free of all worldly possessions. In turn, the Cynics are believed to have derived their name from that of the Cynosarges, a famous public gymnasium (an outdoor place of learning) on the outskirts of Athens, where Antisthenes is known to have once taught. According to legend, the Cynosarges itself is named after the Greek for ‘white dog’, kynos argos, as it was supposedly founded on the site of an ancient shrine built where a magnificent white dog dropped a chunk of meat it had stolen from a sacrificial offering.
Describing someone who is terse and economical in their speech, the term laconic derives from Laconia, the name of the southernmost region of mainland Greece that surrounded the city of Sparta. Indeed, the term in fact derives from the ancient Spartans themselves who were renowned for a similarly concise and direct disposition attested in several famous anecdotes recorded in ancient history. According to one story, when Philip II of Macedon set his sights on invading Sparta c.346 BC he sent a message reading ‘If I enter your lands, I will destroy you all, never to rise again’ to which the Spartans simply replied ‘If’. Another Macedonian king, Demetrius I, also received a terse reply when he expressed outrage that Sparta had sent just one ambassador to attend his court – the envoy apparently replied, ‘One ambassador, one king.’
Describing an apathetic or lukewarm attitude, especially towards religion, the unusual adjective Laodicean derives from the Ancient Greek region of Laodicea, now located in modern-day Turkey, whose inhabitants were once widely known for their religious indifference. So much so, in fact, that the Laodicean Church was one of the notoriously dissident Seven Churches of Asia mentioned by name in the biblical Book of Revelation, in which the book’s author, John of Patmos, wrote decrying their nonchalant attitude: ‘I know . . . that thou are neither cold nor hot, I would thou wert cold or hot. So, then because thou are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.’
The original mausoleum from which all others take their name was the epic Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the enormous tomb of Mausolus, a fourth-century BC ruler of the Ancient Greek province of Caria, which is today located in western Turkey. Erected by Mausolus’s widow, Artemisia, this first mausoleum was one of a group of exceptional landmarks – alongside the Pyramids of Egypt and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – chosen by the Greek poet Antipater of Sidon in the second century BC as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a designation which undoubtedly helped to popularize the word mausoleum as a more general term for a tomb or resting place. In this sense, the word in English dates from the early 1500s.
First recorded in the late sixteenth century, the word solecism is variously used to describe a grammatical or linguistic error, the improper use of language or of a particular word, or else, in a more figurative sense, a breach of good manners or etiquette. The term derives from the Greek word soloikos, meaning ‘speaking incorrectly’, which is itself thought to come from the name of Soli, a colony of Cilicia in the south of modern-day Turkey, whose populace were historically considered to speak a harsh and corrupted dialect of Greek by the more refined Athenians.
A sybarite is a person devoted to the pursuit of pleasure or a lover of luxury and indulgence. Dating from the late 1500s in English, the term derives from the name of Sybaris, an Ancient Greek colony in what is now southern Italy, which flourished in the sixth and seventh centuries BC thanks to the remarkable fertility of its lands. As both the city and its wealth grew and grew, the lavishness that its inhabitants could afford became widely known and envied, and ultimately the name sybarite became synonymous with any equally decadent or hedonistic lifestyle.