1578: tragedy and tragic: a goat song Apr 10, 2019

There are many words for which the origin is unknown or too disputed for confidence, but less common is when the etymology is known but no one knows why. For instance, the word ‘tragedy’ comes from Greek—not surprising with the rich history of the Greek tragedy in drama—but when broken down the word translates directly as ‘goat song’, ‘tragōidia’ being from ‘tragos’ meaning ‘goat’ and ‘ōidē’, which also gave English ‘ode’. Indeed, ‘tragic’ was only associated to ‘tragedy’ in English much later, but in French and Greek again comes from this ‘tragos’, so even divorced from the ‘ode’, there is again the connection between goats and sorrow from Greek. 

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