2619: Greek Name for Mars Feb 15, 2022
English has lots of words with 'pyro-' like 'pyromaniac' from the Greek word for 'fire', but their word for the planet Mars, Pyroeis, which literally 'the fiery' we did not go with. Instead, we took took the Roman name 'Mars', a deity of war, because its red color was associated with blood. The Greek name was for the same reason, though it went in another direction.
2591: mathematics & wiskunde Jan 17, 2022
Most language's words for mathematics around Europe borrow directly from Ancient Greek μαθηματικός (mathēmatikós), except for Dutch which uses 'wiskunde'. This is not so exceptional as it might look at first glance however, since it is not a totally unique word per se but a calque, insofar as it is just translated literally. Before this 'mathematica' was used in Dutch but this purism was introduced in the 16th century. 'Wiskunde' would mean 'known art' or more to the point "art of what is known", & likewise in Ancient Greek μαθηματικός (mathēmatikós) breaks down to mean 'of knowledge'.
2569: Greek Re-Borrowing 'Cinema' Dec 25, 2021
While English has a number of regional words for movie theater, including 'cinema', and this word has permeated many other languages. Originally from Greek κίνημα (kínima) meaning 'movement' and the same root as 'kinetic' led to the German 'Kino' (from 'Kinematograph') via the French 'cinéma(tographe)'. This was the later reborrowed into Greek σινεμά (sinemá) with that same meaning.
2515: A Shift in Latin 3rd Person Endings Nov 1, 2021
In Latin, the present tense, 3rd person endings are singular '-t' and plural '-unt'. In Proto-Italic however, these were featured an [i] at the end, i.e. '-ti' and '-unti' respectively, though not always spelt that way specifically. This was probably related to the way that Greek constructed its verbs, though it did eventually drop off. There are inscriptions in Pompeii however that show 'estē' for what would be the Classical Latin 'est'. Indeed, Pompeii is a great source for popular writing as opposed to more formal, high-register, and perhaps most importantly edited writing. This alternate form might have been the source for Romanian's verb endings which look like that today somewhat.
2486: Linear A & B Oct 2, 2021
The Greek alphabet was ultimately derived from Phoenician (a.k.a. Punic; a.k.a. Canaanite), but considering the shapes of the letters, the inclusion of vowels, and changing direction of the writing itself, this was not an immediate process. Two writing systems, known as Linear A and Linear B, emerged in the eastern Mediterranean. Linear A was used from about 1800–1450 BC with no decipherable texts to date, but was used by the Mycenaeans (Minoans): early Greeks based in the Aegean and especially Crete. Already Linear A switched to a left-to-right script, and in addition to containing symbols for old letters, there are new letters, grammatical symbols, whole syllables and a number system including fractions. In Linear B, also used by the Mycenaeans from about 1450 BC until the Bronze Age Collapse, seemingly for primarily official purposes. Like Linear A, some symbols were letters and others whole syllables—not unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs in that way—with about 200 overall signs. Ultimately, these, and other scripts used for early Greek language writing can help to show the transition of a once glyph-based system of representing words and sounds into a recognizable form of the alphabets it led to.
2456: Fraternities Using Greek Sep 2, 2021
Fraternities and Sororities in North America usually use 2 or 3 Greek letters in their names. Some of these don't stand for anything, but originally these secret societies, now public, used Greek mottos, such as the oldest, ΦΒΚ, standing for Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης (Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs) literally translating as "love of wisdom [philosophy] is the helmsman of life", or ΔΥ standing for Δικαια Υποθηκη (Dikaia Upotheke) for 'justice, our foundation'. Some fraternal societies have kept these mottos secret, or have just picked Greek letters for nothing in particular.
2224: Lunate Sigma Jan 16, 2021
The Greek letter sigma is special in its design in a number of ways. It is the only to have 3 forms: Σ, σ, and ς (the last only found at the end of words), but even these are not the only way it's looked. The Lunate Sigma used in Greek of the Hellenistic period, was written in a C-like shape, now known as the Lunate Sigma (uppercase Ϲ, lowercase ϲ) called as such in reference to the Moon. This should not be confused for the Latin letter C/c. It only has two forms, laking the distinct word-final form that is found today. These days, it is mostly found in religious contexts or other decorative fonts.
1682: Hymen and hymen Jul 23, 2019
The Greek deity of marriage is referred to as Ὑμήν ('hymen') but this is not the express origin the homophone denoting female anatomy. For one thing, the deity was conceptualized as a man, but more importantly the physiological term comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *syu-men- with *syu- meaning 'sew' or 'bring together ('sew' coming from the same root). To be clear, the name of the Greek mythical is estimated to generally come from the same derivation but in the sense of bringing two people together through a wedding itself.