English words of Greek origin


The Greek language has contributed to the English lexicon in five main ways:
Of these, the neologisms are by far the most numerous.

Indirect and direct borrowings

Since the living Greek and English languages were not in direct contact until modern times, borrowings were necessarily indirect, coming either through Latin, or from Ancient Greek texts, not the living spoken language.

Vernacular borrowings

Romance languages

freely borrowed words from Greek. Many were passed on to Romance languages then English, usually via French. Some have remained close to the Greek original, e.g., ''lamp. In others, the phonetic and orthographic forms have changed considerably. For instance, place was borrowed into French from Latin platea, itself borrowed from πλατεία, 'broad '. Italian piazza and Spanish plaza are of the same origin and are later borrowings into English.
The word olive comes through the Romance from the Latin olīva, which in turn comes from the archaic Greek elaíwā. A later Greek word, boútȳron, became Latin butyrum and eventually English butter.
A large group of early borrowings, again transmitted first through Latin then through various vernaculars, comes from Christian vocabulary:
  • chair << καθέδρα
  • bishop << epískopos
  • priest << presbýteros
In some cases, the orthography of these words was later changed to reflect the Greek—and Latin—spelling: e.g., quire was respelled choir in the 17th century. Sometimes this was done incorrectly: ache is from a Germanic root; the spelling ache'' reflects Samuel Johnson's incorrect etymology from ἄχος.

Other

Exceptionally, church came into Old English as cirice, circe via a West Germanic language. The Greek form was probably kȳriakḗ . In contrast, the Romance languages generally used the Latin words ecclēsia or basilica, both borrowed from Greek.

Learned borrowings

Many more words were borrowed by scholars writing in Medieval and Renaissance Latin. Some words were borrowed in essentially their original meaning, often transmitted through Classical Latin: topic, type, physics, iambic, eta, necromancy, cosmopolite. A few result from scribal errors: encyclopedia < ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία 'the circle of learning' ; acne < ἀκνή < ἀκμή 'high point, acme'. Some kept their Latin form, e.g., podium < πόδιον.
Others were borrowed unchanged as technical terms, but with specific, novel meanings:
But by far the largest Greek contribution to English vocabulary is the huge number of scientific, medical, and technical neologisms that have been coined by compounding Greek roots and affixes to produce novel words which never existed in the Greek language:
  • utopia
  • zoology
  • hydrodynamics
  • photography
  • oocyte
  • helicobacter
So it is really the combining forms of Greek roots and affixes that are borrowed, not the words. Neologisms using these elements are coined in all the European languages, and spread to the others freely—including to Modern Greek, where they are considered to be reborrowings. Traditionally, these coinages were constructed using only Greek morphemes, e.g., metamathematics, but increasingly, Greek, Latin, and other morphemes are combined, sometimes using the Greek interfix -ο-. These hybrid words were formerly considered to be 'barbarisms', such as:
  • television ;
  • bicycle ;
  • linguist ;
  • metalinguistic ;
  • homosexual ;
  • speedometer ;
  • microwave ;
  • bigram is generally used in computer science and computational linguistics for any two adjacent items while digram, the purely Greek formation, is generally used in academic linguistics specifically for a pair of letters;
  • unigram ''vs. monogram, which has a different meaning.
Some derivations are idiosyncratic, not following the usual Greek compounding patterns even if they are composed entirely of Greek elements, for example:
  • hadron < ἁδρός with the suffix -on, itself abstracted from Greek anion ;
  • henotheism < ἑν- 'one + ‑o‑ + θεός 'god', although ' is not used as a prefix in Greek;
  • taxonomy < τάξις 'order' + -nomy, inappropriately using an interfix -ο-. where the "more etymological form" is ', as found in ταξίαρχος, 'taxiarch', and the neologism taxidermy. Modern Greek uses ταξινομία in its reborrowing.
  • psychedelic < ψυχή 'psyche' + δηλοῦν 'make manifest, reveal'; the regular formation is ', according to the ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, or ', according to the linguist Nick Nicholas;
  • telegram; the regular formation is ';
  • heuristic, regular formation ';
  • chrysalis, regular spelling ';
  • ptomaine, regular formation ';
  • kerosene, hydrant, symbiont.
Many combining forms have specific technical meanings in neologisms, not predictable from the Greek sense :
  • -cyte or cyto- < κύτος 'container', means biological cells, not arbitrary containers.
  • -oma < -ωμα, a generic morpheme forming deverbal nouns, such as diploma and glaucoma, comes to have the very narrow meaning of 'tumor' or 'swelling', on the model of words like carcinoma < καρκίνωμα. For example, melanoma does not come from μελάνωμα 'blackness', but rather from the modern combining forms melano- + -oma.
  • -itis < -ῖτις, a generic adjectival suffix; in medicine used to mean a disease characterized by inflammation: appendicitis, conjunctivitis,..., and now facetiously generalized to mean "feverish excitement".
  • -osis < -ωσις, originally a state, condition, or process; in medicine, used for a disease.
  • petro- < πέτρο- 'rock'; used to mean petroleum, as in petrodollars.
  • syn- < συν- 'with'; refers to synthesis or synthesizers: syngas, Synclavier.
And some borrowings are modified in fairly arbitrary ways:
  • gas is irregular both in formation and in spelling;
  • hecto-, kilo-, myria-, etymologically ', ', ';
In standard chemical nomenclature, the numerical prefixes are "only loosely based on the corresponding Greek words", e.g. octaconta- is used for 80 instead of the Greek ogdoeconta- '80'. There are also "mixtures of Greek and Latin roots", e.g., nonaconta-, for 90, is a blend of the Latin nona- for 9 and the Greek found in words such as ἐνενήκοντα enenekonta '90'. The Greek form is, however, used in the names of polygons in mathematics, though the names of polyhedra are more idiosyncratic.
Many Greek affixes such as anti- and -ic have become productive in English, combining with arbitrary English words: antichoice, Fascistic.
Some words in English have been reanalyzed as a base plus affix, leading to affixes based on Greek words, but which are not affixes in Greek. Their meaning relates to the full word they were shortened from, not the Greek meaning:
  • -athon or '.
  • -ase, used in chemistry for enzymes, is abstracted from diastase, where -ασις is not a morpheme at all in Greek.
  • -on for elementary particles, from electron: lepton, neutron, phonon,...
  • -nomics refers specifically to economics: Reaganomics.
  • heli- and -copter from helico-pter 'spiral-wing'
Nostalgia was coined by a 17th-century German as a calque of German Heimwehe.''

Through other languages

Some Greek words were borrowed through Arabic and then Romance. Many are learned:
Others are popular:
  • bottarga
  • tajine
  • carat
  • talisman
  • possibly quintal.
A few words took other routes:
  • seine comes from a West Germanic form *sagīna, from Latin sagēna, from σαγήνη.
  • effendi comes from Turkish, borrowed from Medieval Greek αυθέντης.
  • hora comes from Romanian and Modern Hebrew, borrowed from χορός 'dance'.
  • marmelade comes via Portuguese marmelada, from Latin melimelum, from μελίμηλον 'variety of apple'.

    Vernacular and learned doublets

Some Greek words have given rise to etymological doublets, being borrowed both through a later learned, direct route, and earlier through an organic, indirect route:
  • ἀδάμας adamant, diamond;
  • ἀμυγδάλη amygdala, almond;
  • ἀνόρεκτος anorectic, anorexic from Hellenistic Greek;
  • ἀντίφωνα antiphon, anthem;
  • ἀποθήκη apothec, boutique via French, bodega via Spanish;
  • ἀσϕόδελος asphodel, daffodil;
  • αὐθεντικός authentic, effendi ;
  • βάλσαμον balsam, balm;
  • βάσις basis, base, bass ;
  • βλάσφημος blasphemy, blame;
  • βούτυρον butyr, butter;
  • διάβολος diabol, devil;
  • δραχμή drachma, dram, dirhem via Arabic;
  • ἔλαιον elaeo-, oil, olive, oleum, latke via Eastern Slavic, Yiddish, Hellenistic ελάδιον;
  • ἐλεημοσύνη eleemosynary, alms;
  • ἐπίσκοπος episcop, bishop;
  • ζῆλος zeal, jealous;
  • ἡμικρανία hemicrania, migraine;
  • θησαυρός thesaurus, treasure;
  • ἰῶτα iota, jot;
  • καθέδρα cathedra, chair, chaise;
  • κάνναβις cannabis, canvas;
  • κέρας/κέρατ- 'horn' keratin, carat via Arabic;
  • κόλπος 'lap, womb, hollow, bay' colp, gulf;
  • κυβερνᾶν cybernetics, govern;
  • πάπυρος papyrus, paper;
  • παροικία parochial, parish;
  • πόδιον podium, pew;
  • πρεσβύτερος presbyter, priest;
  • πυξίς pyx, box;
  • σκάνδαλον scandal, slander;
  • τρίπους/τρίποδ- tripod, tripos ;
  • τύμπανον 'drum' tympanum 'eardrum', timbre, timpani;
  • φρενετικός frenetic, frantic;
  • χειρουργός chirurgical, surgeon;
  • χορός chorus, choir, hora ;
  • χρῖσμα chrism, cream;
  • χρῑστιᾱνός Christian, christen, cretin;
  • ὥρα horo, hour.
Other doublets come from differentiation in the borrowing languages:
  • γραμματική grammatic: grammar, glamor, grimoire;
  • δίσκος discus: disc, dish, dais, and desk;
  • κιθάρα cither: guitar, zither, gittern, cittern, etc.;
  • κρύπτη crypt: grotto, croft;
  • παραβολή parabola: parable; additional doublets in Romance give palaver, parol, and parole;
  • τόρνος : turn, tour
  • ϕαντασία phantasy, fantasy, fantasia; fancy in 15th-century English.