Greek Flashcards
“Maiden” is a translation of the name of what temple, whose name was also once given to the room in a home in ancient Greece where unmarried, virginal daughters lived?
Parthenon
The condition known as nyctophobia indicates an irrational fear of what?
Dark/Night
Four Greek letters are written as two-letter words in English. Three of them appear consecutively in the Greek alphabet; which one does not?
The four letters are mu, nu, xi, and pi. It might seem logical that mu, nu, and pi would be the three consecutive ones but nope! Xi comes right after nu. Pi is the odd one out.
The autological term for what figure of speech and rhetorical device is derived from the Greek words for “sharp” and “dull”?
Oxymoron
This word for disturbance of regular flow or rhythm as in jazz is from the Greek for “cutting short.”
Syncopation
This word for an artwork made of 3 panels comes from the Greek for “three tablets.”
Triptych
From the Greek for “cave”, it’s an old term for a cave dweller or caveman.
Troglodyte
From Greek, this male first name means “messiah-bearer.”
Christopher
This the term given to the scent produced by rain falling on dry soil. It is a combination of the Greek terms for (1) stone and (2) the fluid that flows in the veins of gods in Greek mythology.
Petrichor
A “Lett” is a person from Latvia. A “Michigander” is a person from Michigan. And an “Angeleno” is a person from Los Angeles. Name the term for a word like Lett, Michigander, and Angeleno or any other name for a person of a particular geographic or national origin. Appropriately enough, the word is a compound of Greek roots meaning in essence “name of the people”.
Demonym
If you are experiencing alektorophobia, what are you afraid of?
Chickens / Roosters
Greek for “to cleanse” gives us this word that describes an experience that relieves pent-up emotions.
Cathartic
This condition was thought to arise from an excess of black bile, the origin of its name.
Melancholia
From the Greek for “moral character”, this discipline is concerned with right and wrong.
Ethics
From the name of the Greek goddess of vengeance, it’s a longstanding rival or enemy.
Nemesis
What Greek word for a theatrical mask did Carl Jung use for the social identity an individual presents to the world?
Persona
The lower case Greek letter α is represented in English as “alpha”, β is “beta”, and π is “pi”. What name in English represents the Greek letter θ?
Theta
The name for the supercontinent Pangaea comes from the Ancient Greek for “all” (pan) and “Mother Earth” (Gaia). Likewise, what is the name of the superocean that surrounded Pangaea, from the Ancient Greek for “all” and “sea”?
Panthalassa
Coming from the Greek for “repeating what has been said”, what “-ology” is defined in grammar as the use of redundant words, as seen in the examples “free gift”, “close proximity”, or “mental telepathy”?
Tautology
Identify the system for visual communication whose name comes from the Greek words for “signal” and “bearer”, and fittingly so.
Semaphore
James Joyce’s Ulysses is broken into three parts: “Telemachia”, “Odyssey”, and what, a 6-letter Greek word? Meaning “return home”, this word describes a common theme in Ancient Greek literature in which an epic hero must return home, prominently seen in Homer’s Odyssey.
Nostos
What term, derived from the Greek for “solid” and “impression”, originally referred to a method of duplicate printing, but was given its current (and often pejorative) meaning in social psychology by Walter Lippmann’s 1922 book Public Opinion?
Stereotype
The invertebrates of the taxonomic phylum Platyhelminthes are worms so named for their shape. Helminth is the Greek word for “worm” and platy- is the Greek for what?
Flat
In the word “hyperbole”, “hyper” comes from the Greek word for “above” or “beyond”. What does “-bole” mean? It derives from the Greek verb βάλλω (bállō), which is also the primary root of (for example) “ballistic.”
Throw
Which letter of the Greek alphabet was used in antiquity as a symbol for death, presumably because it was the first letter of the Greek word for “death” and also perhaps because it roughly resembles a human skull. Some engravings would avoid the letter’s use by showing the letters delta and epsilon in its place.
Theta
A literary comedy by Aristophanes, produced in 405 BCE, depicts Dionysus descending into Hades to bring Euripides back to improve the quality of Athenian tragedy, but instead he brings back Aeschylus. This play was titled Batrachoi, which translates into English as what animals?
Frogs
