Return to home pageAncient Greek Words and Insults

We don't really know much about the language of bronze-age Greece. In 1200 BC, around the time of the Trojan war, the "classical" Greek culture that we think of as ancient Greece was still some five hundred years in the future. And although Homer shows the Greeks and Trojans communicating easily on the battlefield, archaeology suggests that the Trojans were probably related to the Hittites and would have spoken a completely different language.

With nothing better to go on, I've used Classical Greek expressions and insults. Who knows? Perhaps the same expressions were also popular five hundred years before. Since we know Greek sailors would, and very likely still do, swear like, er, sailors, keeping their curses in Greek leaves the book clean enough for parents. Or so it appears.

Here, then, are some of the words from Torn from Troy, and what they mean, more or less.

chiton
A man's garment. Like a toga.
eksepsis
Blood poisoning. The English word "sepsis" comes from the same root.
gloutos
Buttocks, but ruder.
hagios
A Greek state meaning, approximately, "protected by the gods". The closest English equivalent might be "sanctified".
himation
A woman's garment, more like a cloak, probably worn overtop something else. Also like a toga. There is some question about whether they were strictly for women.
khalash
No meaning. Just something the Cicones said when they stabbed someone. An English translation might be "Yahoo!" or perhaps "Take that, you kopros sniffer!"
koprolith
A fossilized or otherwise petrified piece of kopros. Source of the English word coprolith.
kopros
Ahem. Dung.
koprophage
One who eats kopros.
kottabos
A Greek drinking game that involved flicking drops of wine from their goblet at a target.
kuna
A word with a variety of meanings, one of which is a female dog.
kylix
A wide-mouthed drinking goblet.
lawagete
A mid-level military commander.
lotos
Not translated. Homer refers to the "lotos-eaters", from which we get the term "lotus eaters". He describes it as a "flowery fruit." The seed pod of the opium poppy, from which we get heroin, could easily be called that.
methusai
Old women. An insult, especially when applied to men.
ophion
Opium.
pestillos
Pestle, as in "mortar and".
sakcharis
Sugar. It's unlikely that Apollonia's people would have had the skills to refine sugar to the granulated white form that we're used to, but there is no evidence they didn't, either.
skatophage
An eater of skatos.
skatos
Also known as kopros.
stratiotai
One of a wide range of words the Greeks had meaning soldier.
suagroi
People with a romantic attachment to pigs.
troglos
Extrapolated short form for the ancient Greek troglodytai, or primitive cave dweller.
xeneon
Operating room or surgery. Lacking an understanding of germ theory, ancient Greeks didn't do a lot of operations as we know them, but amputations were performed. The stumps were most probably simultaneously sealed and disinfected by cauterization with a burning torch.
xenios
An ancient Greek concept of the honour of the gift-giver. To the Greeks, giving gifts, especially amongst high-born families, was as much a source of honour as receiving them.