Words from Byzantine Greek
6 words in Curio passed through Byzantine Greek on their way into English.
About Byzantine Greek
Medieval stage of the Greek language · an earlier stage of a language still spoken today
Where
Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, across Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean
When
Speakers
No reliable count
No census of its speakers exists.
Family path
- Ancient Greek
- Koine Greek
- Byzantine Greek
- VenetanLate LatinNew LatinLatinMiddle FrenchOld Italian
- English
Where it came from
Byzantine Greek is the link between Koine Greek, the older vernacular, and Modern Greek. Alexander the Great's conquests and the Hellenistic period had spread Greek across Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and from the 7th century it was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire. Its literature drew on Attic Greek and on vernacular Koine, the language of the New Testament.
Source: Wikipedia
Family
Byzantine Greek grew out of Koine Greek.
The words, A to Z
- gondola
The slim black boat that glides through Venice may carry a name borrowed from an old warship.
- lamp
This everyday word for a light-giver has been shining, quite literally, since ancient Greece.
- lexicon
A word for the whole stock of words was itself once shorthand for a book.
- macaroni
A tube of pasta once carried the swagger of a fool, a saint, and a dandy all at once.
- monologue
A speech built for an audience of one voice.
- rice
This tiny grain carried its name across half the world before it ever reached an English plate.