The Greek language has contributed to the English vocabulary in five main ways:
- vernacular borrowings, transmitted orally through Vulgar Latin directly into Old English, e.g., 'butter' (Old English butere from Latin butyrum < ????????), or through French, e.g., 'ochre'.
- learned borrowings from classical Greek texts, e.g., 'physics' (< Latin physica < Greek ?? ??????);
- a few borrowings via Arabic scientific and philosophical writing, e.g., 'alchemy' (< ??????);
- coinages in post-classical Latin or modern languages using classical Greek roots, e.g., 'telephone' (< ???? + ????) or a mixture of Greek and other roots, e.g., 'television' (< Greek ???? + English 'vision' < Latin visio); these are often shared among the modern European languages, including Modern Greek;
- direct borrowings from Modern Greek, e.g., bouzouki.
The post-classical coinages are by far the most numerous of these.
Video English words of Greek origin
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 (through texts or various vernaculars), or from Ancient Greek texts, not the living spoken language.
Vernacular borrowings
Some Greek words were borrowed into Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. English often received these words from French. Their phonetic and orthographic form has sometimes changed considerably. For instance, place was borrowed both by Old English and by French from Latin platea, itself borrowed from Greek ??????? (????) 'broad (street)'; the Italian piazza and Spanish plaza have the same origin, and have been borrowed into English in parallel. The word olive comes through the Romance from the Latin word ol?va, which in turn comes from the Greek ?????? (elaíw?). A later Greek word, ???????? (boút?ron) becomes 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 << ??????? (cf. 'cathedra'), bishop << ????????? (epískopos 'overseer'), priest << ??????????? (presbýteros 'elder'), and church < Old English cirice, circe < probably ??????? [?????] (k?riak? [oikía] 'lord's [house]'). In some cases, the orthography of these words was later changed to reflect the Greek - and Latin - spelling: e.g., quire was respelled as 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 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 < ????????? ??????? 'the circle of learning', not a compound in Greek; acne (skin condition) < erroneous ???? < ???? 'high point, acme'. Some kept their Latin form, e.g., podium < ??????.
Others were borrowed unchanged as technical terms, but with specific, novel meanings: telescope < ?????????? 'far-seeing' refers to an optical instrument for seeing far away rather than a person who can see far into the distance; phlogiston < ????????? 'burnt thing' is a supposed fire-making potential rather than something which has been burned, or can be burned; bacterium < ????????? 'stick (diminutive)' is a kind of microorganism rather than a small stick or staff. This also applies to combining forms used in neologisms: -cyte or cyto- < ????? 'container' refers to biological cells, not arbitrary containers.
Usage in neologisms
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 (1516, ?? 'not' + ????? 'place'), zoology (1669, ???? + ?????), hydrodynamics (1738, ???? + ?????????), photography (1834, ??? + ????????), oocyte (1895, ??? + ?????), helicobacter (1989, ???? + ?????????). Such terms are coined in all the European languages, and spread to the others freely--including to Modern Greek. Traditionally, these coinages were constructed using only Greek morphemes, e.g., metamathematics, but increasingly, Greek, Latin, and other morphemes are combined, as in television (Greek ???? + Latin vision), metalinguistic (Greek ???? + Latin lingua + Greek -????? + Greek -????), and garbology (English garbage + Greek -??????). These hybrid words were formerly considered to be 'barbarisms'.
Many Greek affixes such as anti- and -ic have become productive in English, combining with arbitrary English words: antichoice, Fascistic.
Arabic
Some Greek words were borrowed through Arabic and then Romance: alchemy (al- + ?????? or ?????), elixir (al- + ??????), alembic (al- + ?????), botargo (?????????), and possibly quintal (??????????? < Latin centenarium (pondus)). Curiously, chemist appears to be a back-formation from alchemist.
Vernacular/learned doublets
Some Greek words have given rise to etymological doublets, being borrowed both through a later learned, direct route, but earlier through an organic, indirect route:
Other doublets come from differentiation in the borrowing languages:
- ?????????? grammatic(al): grammar, glamor, grimoire;
- ?????? discus: disc, dish, dais, and desk;
- ?????? cither: guitar, cithren, zither, gittern, cittern, etc.;
- ?????? crypt: grotto, croft;
- ???????? parabola: parable; additional doublets in Romance give palaver, parol, and parole;
- ???????? phantasy: fantasy; fancy in 15th-century English.
From modern Greek
Finally, with the growth of tourism, some words reflecting modern Greek culture have been borrowed into English--many of them originally borrowings into Greek themselves: retsina, souvlaki, taverna (< Italian), ouzo (disputed etymology), moussaka (< Turkish < Arabic), baklava (< Turkish), feta (< Italian), bouzouki (< Turkish), gyro (the food, a calque of Turkish döner).
Maps English words of Greek origin
Greek as an intermediary
Many words from the Hebrew Bible were transmitted to the western languages through the Greek of the Septuagint, often without morphological regularization: rabbi (?????), seraphim (????????, ???????), paradise (?????????? < Hebrew < Persian), pharaoh (????? < Hebrew < Egyptian), .
Written form of Greek words in English
Many Greek words, especially those borrowed through the literary tradition, are recognizable as such from their spelling. Latin had standard orthographies for Greek borrowings: Greek ? was written as 'y', ? as 'ph', ? as 'c', rough breathings as 'h', etc. These conventions (which originally reflected pronunciation) have carried over into English and other languages with historical orthography (like French). They make it possible to recognize words of Greek origin, and give hints as to their pronunciation and inflection.
Some romanizations are not completely standard. The Ancient Greek diphthongs ?? and ?? may be spelled in three different ways in English: the digraphs ae and oe; the ligatures æ and oe; and the simple letter e. The ligatures have largely fallen out of use worldwide; the digraphs are uncommon in American usage, but remain common in British usage. The spelling depends mostly on the variety of English, not on the particular word. Examples are: encyclopaedia / encyclopædia / encyclopedia, haemoglobin / hæmoglobin / hemoglobin, oedema / oedema / edema. Some words are almost always written with the digraph or ligature: amoeba / amoeba, rarely ameba; Oedipus / OEdipus rarely Edipus; others are almost always written with the single letter: haeresie was never used, and hæresie is obsolete. The verbal ending -??? is spelled -ize in American English and -ise or -ize in British English. The Ancient Greek diphthong ?? is rendered differently in different words: as i (icon), as ei (eidetic), or as e (crises). The e form is standard for the plural suffix -???/-es, following the Latin declension, except in poleis, necropoleis, and acropoleis (though acropolises is by far the most common English plural).
Though most learned borrowings and coinages follow the Latin system, there are some exceptions: eureka (cf. heuristic), kinetic (cf. cinematography), krypton (cf. cryptic). In the 19th and 20th centuries, a few learned words and phrases were introduced using a transliteration of Ancient Greek, rather than the traditional Latin-based spelling and morphology or dropped inflectional endings, e.g., nous (????), hoi polloi (?? ??????), kudos (?????), moron (?????).
Some words whose spelling in French and Middle English did not reflect their Greco-Latin origins were refashioned with etymological spellings in the 16th and 17th centuries: caracter became character and quire became choir in the 16-17th centuries.
In some cases, a word's spelling clearly shows its Greek origin. If it includes ph or includes y between consonants, it is very likely Greek. If it includes rrh, phth, or chth; or starts with hy-, ps-, pn-, or chr-; or the rarer pt-, ct-, chth-, rh-, x-, sth-, mn-, tm-, gn- or bd-, then it is Greek, with some exceptions: gnat, gnaw, gneiss. There are exceptions: ptarmigan is from a Gaelic word, the p having been added by false etymology; style is probably written with a 'y' because the Greek word ?????? 'column' and the Latin word stilus 'stake, pointed instrument' were confused. The word trophy, though ultimately of Greek origin, did not have a ? but a ? in its Greek form, ????????.
Pronunciation
In clusters such as ps-, pn-, and gn- which are not allowed by English phonotactics, the usual English pronunciation drops the first consonant (e.g., psychology) at the start of a word; compare gnostic [n?st?k] and agnostic [ægn?st?k]; there are a few exceptions: tmesis [t(?)mi:s?s]. Initial x- is pronounced z. Ch is pronounced like k rather than as in "church": e.g., character, chaos. Consecutive vowels are often pronounced separately rather than forming a single vowel sound or one of them becoming silent (e.g., "theatre" vs. "feat").
Inflectional endings and plurals
Though many English words derived from Greek through the literary route drop the inflectional endings (tripod, zoology, pentagon) or use Latin endings (papyrus, mausoleum), some preserve the Greek endings: lexicon, schema (-?), topos, climax (-s), agape, crisis, kudos.
In the case of Greek endings, the plurals sometimes follow the Greek rules: phenomenon, phenomena; tetrahedron, tetrahedra; crisis, crises; hypothesis, hypotheses; polis, poleis; stigma, stigmata; topos, topoi; cyclops, cyclopes; but often do not: colon, colons not *cola (except for the very rare technical term of rhetoric); pentathlon, pentathlons not *pentathla; demon, demons not *demones; climaxes, not *climaces. Usage is mixed in some cases: schema, schemas or schemata; lexicon, lexicons or lexica; helix, helixes or helices; sphinx, sphinges or sphinxes; clitoris, clitorises or clitorides. And there are misleading cases: pentagon comes from Greek pentagonon, so its plural cannot be *pentaga; it is pentagons (Greek ?????????/pentagona) (cf. Plurals from Latin and Greek).
Verbs
Few English verbs are derived from the corresponding Greek verbs; examples are baptize, ostracize, and cauterize. However, the Greek verbal suffix -ize is productive in Latin, the Romance languages, and English: words like metabolize, though composed of a Greek root and a Greek suffix, are modern compounds.
Borrowings and cognates
Since both Greek and English are Indo-European languages, they share many cognates. In some cases, the cognates can be confused with borrowings. For example, the English mouse is cognate with Greek ??? /mys/ and Latin m?s, all from an Indo-European word *m?s; they are not borrowings. Similarly, acre is cognate to Latin ager and Greek ?????, but not a borrowing; on the other hand, the prefix agro- is a borrowing from Greek, and the prefix agri- a borrowing from Latin.
Phrases
Many Latin phrases are used verbatim in English texts--et cetera (etc.), ad nauseam, modus operandi (M.O.), ad hoc, in flagrante delicto, mea culpa, and so on--but few Greek phrases or expressions are. Among them are: hoi polloi 'the many', eureka 'I have found (it)', kalos kagathos 'beautiful and virtuous', hapax legomenon 'once said', kyrie eleison 'Lord, have mercy'.
Calques and translations
Greek technical terminology was often calqued in Latin rather than borrowed, and then borrowed from Latin into English. Examples include (grammatical) case from Latin casus 'an event, something that has fallen', a semantic calque of Greek ?????? 'a fall'; nominative, from Latin n?min?t?vus, a translation of Greek ??????????; adverb, a morphological calque of Greek ???????? as ad- + verbum; magnanimus, from Greek ?????????, literally 'great spirit'.
Greek phrases were also calqued in Latin, then borrowed or translated into English. A commonplace is an English calque of the Latin locus communis, itself a calque of Greek ?????? ?????. The Latin phrase deus ex machina ('god out of the machine') was calqued from the Greek ??? ??????? ???? (apò m?khanês theós). Materia medica is a short form of Dioscorides' De Materia Medica, the Latin translation of ???? ???? ????????. Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum) is a calque of ???? ???? ??????. Subject matter is a calque of Latin subiecta m?teria, itself a calque of Aristotle's phrase ? ?????????? ???. Wisdom tooth came to English from Latin dentes sapientiae, from Arabic a?r?su 'l?ikmi, from Greek ?????????????, used by Hippocrates. Political animal is from Greek ????????? ???? (in Aristotle's Politics). Quintessence is post-classical Latin quinta essentia, from Greek ?????? ?????.
The Greek word ?????????? has come into English both in borrowed forms like evangelical and the form gospel, an English calque (Old English gód spel 'good tidings') of Latin bona adnuntiatio, itself a calque of the Greek.
Statistics
The contribution of Greek to the English vocabulary can be quantified in two ways, type and token frequencies: type frequency is the proportion of distinct words; token frequency is the proportion of words in actual texts.
Since most words of Greek origin are specialized technical and scientific coinages, the type frequency is considerably higher than the token frequency. And the type frequency in a large word list will be larger than that in a small word list. In a typical English dictionary of 80,000 words, which corresponds very roughly to the vocabulary of an educated English speaker, about 5% of the words are borrowed from Greek.
See also
- List of Greek and Latin roots in English
- List of Greek morphemes used in English
- List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names for help with Greek-derived scientific names of organisms
- Transliteration of Greek into English
- English pronunciation of Greek letters
- Classical compound
- Hybrid word
- Etymologicum Magnum
Notes
References
- Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition
- Konstantinidis, Aristidis (2006), ? ??????????? ???????? ??? ????????? ??????? (The Universal Reach of the Greek Language). ISBN 960-90338-2-2. Athens: self-published.
- Krill, Richard M., Greek and Latin in English Today, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1990. ISBN 0-86516-241-7.
- F.A. March, "The Influence of the Greeks on the English Language", The Chautauquan 16:6:660-666 (March 1893)
- F.A. March, "Greek in the English of Modern Science", The Chautauquan 17:1:20-23 (April 1893)
- Scheler, Manfred (1977): Der englische Wortschatz (English vocabulary). Berlin: Schmidt.
External links
- Mathematical Words: Origins and Sources (John Aldrich, University of Southampton)
Source of article : Wikipedia
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