Words from Proto-Hellenic
13 words in Curio passed through Proto-Hellenic on their way into English.
About Proto-Hellenic
Indo-European language; the common ancestor of all varieties of Greek · reconstructed by scholars, never written down
Where
Greece, entered by its speakers during the European Bronze Age
When
Speakers
No reliable count
Reconstructed by scholars. Never written down.
Family path
- Proto-Hellenic
- Ancient GreekLatin
- English
Dashed: reconstructed, never written down
Where it came from
Proto-Hellenic, also called Proto-Greek, is the Indo-European language that was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek. Its speakers entered Greece sometime during the European Bronze Age, around 2200 to 1900 BC. By about 1700 BC it had begun to diversify into a southern and a northern group, leading on to Mycenaean Greek, the ancient Greek dialects, and ultimately Koine, Byzantine and Modern Greek.
Source: Wikipedia
The words, A to Z
- aerodrome
Before planes had airports, they had a word borrowed from horse racing.
- apocalypse
A word for the end of everything once just meant taking the lid off.
- argon
This gas got its name for doing absolutely nothing — chemically speaking.
- bureaucracy
The word for red tape actually starts with a reddish cloth on a desk.
- comma
That small curved pause in a sentence was once a piece cut away.
- dragon
The fire-breathing beast in our stories was named for its stare, not its scales.
- energy
The word for what makes things move is, at its root, just a word for being 'at work.'
- graffiti
The scrawls on a wall trace back to the simple act of scratching a mark into something.
- nickel
This metal's name began as a swindler's joke about worthless ore that looked like silver.
- pain
The word for hurt started out as the price you owed for a wrong.
- platinum
A gleaming metal named as if it were silver's poorer cousin.
- rhythm
The word for a steady beat once meant nothing more than water finding its way downhill.
- tourist
Someone who goes around — literally, since the root of this word once meant a turn on a lathe.