Greek

the Greek calends

A time that is expected to never arrive or occur. (Used after a preposition, especially "at," "on," or "till.") A reference to the day of the new moon and the first day of the month in the ancient Roman calendar, which the Greeks did not observe. You lent that leech John more money? It'll be at the Greek calends when he pays you back.See also: Greek

beware of Greeks bearing gifts

Be skeptical of a present or kindness from an enemy. The phrase refers to the Trojan horse, a gift to the Trojans from which Greek soldiers emerged and conquered Troy. A: "I can't believe the opposing team made us cupcakes before the big game!" B: "Yeah, I'd beware of Greeks bearing gifts if I were you."See also: bearing, beware, gift, Greek, of

(it's) (all) Greek to me

This might as well be a foreign language, because I don't understand it at all. The phrase comes from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Can you make sense of these instructions? It's all Greek to me!See also: Greek

(it's all) Greek to (one)

(It is) completely unintelligible, as if it is written in a language that one does not speak. The phrase comes from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Mom said these instructions are Greek to her and that we should show them to Dad. A: "Can you understand this error message?" B: "Sorry, Greek to me. You'd better ask one of the programmers."See also: Greek

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Prov. Do not trust an opponent who offers to do something nice for you. (A line from the story of the Trojan horse, as told in Vergil's Aeneid.) Jill: I can't believe Melanie brought me cookies today, when we've been fighting for weeks. Jane: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. She probably has ulterior motives. When the rival company invited all his employees to a Christmas party, Tom's first impulse was to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, but then he upbraided himself for being paranoid.See also: bearing, beware, gift, Greek, of

Greek to (someone)

incomprehensible to someone; as mysterious as Greek writing. I don't understand this. It's all Greek to me. She said it was Greek to her, and that it made no sense at all.See also: Greek

Greek to me, it's

Also, it's all Greek to me. It is beyond my comprehension, as in This new computer program is all Greek to me. This expression was coined by Shakespeare, who used it literally in Julius Caesar (1:2), where Casca says of a speech by Seneca, deliberately given in Greek so that some would not understand it, "For mine own part, it was Greek to me." It soon was transferred to anything unintelligible. See also: Greek

be all Greek to someone

BRITISH, AMERICAN or

be Greek to someone

AMERICANIf you say that something is all Greek to you, you mean that you do not understand it at all. I've no idea what it means — it's all Greek to me. I don't understand legal jargon — it's all Greek to me. Note: The idea behind this expression is that Greek is very difficult to learn and understand, especially because it uses a different alphabet from most other European languages. See also: all, Greek, someone

it's all Greek to me

I can't understand it at all. informal Greek meaning ‘unintelligible language or gibberish’ is recorded from the 16th century. In Shakespeare 's Julius Caesar, Casca, having noted that Cicero speaks Greek, adds ‘for mine own part, it was Greek to me’.See also: all, Greek

beware (or fear) the Greeks bearing gifts

if rivals or enemies show apparent generosity or kindness, you should be suspicious of their motives. proverb This proverb refers to the Trojan priest Laocoon's warning in Virgil 's Aeneid: ‘timeo Danaos et dona ferentes ’, in which he warns his countrymen against taking into their city the gigantic wooden horse that the Greeks have left behind on their apparent departure. The fall of Troy results from their failure to heed this warning.See also: bearing, beware, gift, Greek

it’s all ˈGreek to me

(informal, saying) it is too difficult for me to understand: This contract is written in such complicated language that it’s all Greek to me.See also: all, Greek

Greek to someone

n. something incomprehensible to someone; something as mysterious as Greek writing. I don’t understand this. It’s all Greek to me. See also: Greek, someone

Greeks bearing gifts, beware of/like

Do not trust enemies who pretend to be friends. The term refers to the treachery of the Greeks during the Trojan Wars, when they entered the city of Troy bearing the “gift” of a large wooden horse that was actually filled with soldiers who then burned down the city. See also: bearing, beware, Greek, like, of

Greek to me, it's/that's (all)

It is completely unintelligible; I don’t understand. This term, used by generations of schoolchildren, was coined by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar (1.2), where the conspirator Casca says of Cicero’s speech, “For mine own part, it was Greek to me.” In the play Cicero actually spoke in Greek, in order to prevent some people from understanding, but the term soon was transferred to anything unintelligible and has been so used ever since.See also: Greek

Greek to me

Unintelligible, as in “I didn't understand a word he said—it was all Greek to me.” Shakespeare said it best in this exchange from Julius Caesar: Cassius: Did Cicero say any thing? Casca: Aye, he spoke Greek. Cassius: To what effect? Casca: Nay, an' I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.See also: Greek

greek

Greek

the official language of Greece, constituting the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European family of languages

Greek

the language of the Greeks; together with Old Macedonian, forms the Greek branch of the Indo-European languages. The number of speakers of Greek is more than 9 million. In the history of the language, a distinction is usually made between Ancient and Modern Greek.

Four periods are distinguished in the development of Ancient Greek: (1) the most ancient period, beginning with the first written monuments, the Cretan-Mycenaean Linear B from the 14th to 12th centuries B.C., and lasting until the spread of the Ancient Greek alphabet at the turn of the eighth century B.C.; (2) the classical period, from the origin of literature in Ancient Greek dialects in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. until the spread of the Attic dialect in the fourth century B.C. over almost the entire territory inhabited by the Greeks; (3) the Hellenistic-Romaic period, which was the period of the Koine, the language common to all Greeks, which formed from the Attic dialect and spread after the campaigns of Alexander of Macedonia (fourth century B.C.) over the entire eastern Mediterranean region, where it also became the dominant language during the subordination of Greece to Rome (second century B.C. to the fourth century A.D.); (4) the late Ancient Greek, or early Byzantine, period, from the transfer of the capital of the empire to Constantinople and the separation of the Western Roman Empire in the fourth century A.D. to the time of the complete displacement of Latin by Greek in the fifth to seventh centuries.

Based on the analysis of the Ancient Greek of much later times, from which written texts have been preserved, the following oldest dialects of Greek may be distinguished: (1) the Ionic-Attic dialect group (the Attic dialect and Ionic speech, which spread from the continent to Euboea, the Cy-clades, and the coast of Asia Minor); (2) the Arcadian-Cyprian-Pamphylian group, which appears to have spread initially over a considerable part of southern Greece and the surrounding islands but was displaced in the 12th to 11th centuries B.C. by other dialects and preserved only in isolated expressions; (3) the Aeolian group (the speech of the north-western coast of Asia Minor, the island of Lesbos, and the Thessalian and Boeotian dialects); (4) the Doric group, distinct from the three preceding groups and divided in turn into the following subgroups: the Doric itself, or Southern Doric (the Laconic, Messenian, Argolic-Aeginetan, Corinthian, and Megarian dialects and the speech of the islands of Thera, Milos, Rhodes, and Crete), and Western Doric (the dialects of Aetolia, Locris, Phocis, Achaea, and Elis).

The Dorians moved from northwestern Greece to the Peloponnesus toward the end of the first period. The creation of the heroic Greek epic—the poems of Homer, which have come down to us in a much later recorded form (sixth century B.C.)—came in this period.

During the classical period, Ancient Greek literature developed in four literary dialects: Ionic (Herodotus and others), Attic (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes), Doric (Simonides), and Aeolian (Alcaeus and Sappho).

The third (Hellenistic-Romaic) period of the history of Greek literature is characterized by the spreading of the Koine (Attic, basically urban popular speech, but also incorporating many elements of the Ionic and other dialects) both throughout Greece and far beyond her borders and by the formation of a literary language with strict rules, based on the classical Attic dialect. The literary language also preserved this character during the early Byzantine period.

The phonetics of the classical Ancient Greek (Attic) literary language is characterized by the contrasting of short and long vowels and diphthongs and by its musical (tonic) stress; its morphology is characterized by four cases, a variety of declension types, and a rich system of tenses and moods. As early as the Hellenistic-Romaic period, the spoken language exhibited certain changes that grew stronger in the fourth period (late Ancient Greek).

The grammar of the spoken Greek underwent the greatest change after the early Byzantine period, when several features that are characteristic of other Balkan languages appeared, especially in syntax and in the system of conjugation. From that time it became possible to speak of the existence of spoken Modern Greek, although the written literary language continued to adhere to the old Attic rules. In the Byzantine period the differentiation among the Modern Greek dialects increased, mainly because of territorial variations of the Hellenistic-Romaic Koine. After the fall of Byzantium and the conquest by the Turks of all the territory settled by Greeks, the Modern Greek dialects were subjected to strong influences from other languages.

In modern times a common Greek spoken language—the demotic, which is contrasted with the local rural dialects (the northern and southern Greek) and to the written language, which is based on the traditional Attic rules (the so-called Katharevusa, “purified”)—developed on the basis of the urban speech of central Greece. The convergence of the demotic and the Katharevusa is characteristic of 20th-century Greek. The sphere of usage of the written demotic is widening, acquiring various elements of the Katharevusa; whereas that of the Katharevusa is shrinking—losing some archaic forms, it is becoming a so-called mixed dialect.

The phonetic system of Modern Greek has five vowels (i, e, a, o, and u); sibilant affricates (τσ = ts, and τζ= dz), interdental fricatives (θ and δ), and medial consonants are notable in the consonant system. The morphology is characterized by three genders, three cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive), and a unique system of conjugation.

In addition to Modern Greek another language, Tsakonian (on the southern Peloponnesus), originated from Ancient Greek. Several peripheral Modern Greek dialects that have not been influenced by the demotic have in fact become independent nonwritten languages: Urum (the language of Greek colonists in central Transcaucasia, since the 17th century), Tauro-Romaic (the language of Greek colonists in the Azov region, since the end of the 18th century), and Trebizond-Romaic (the language of Greeks living in southern Italy and Corsica).

REFERENCES

Sobolevskii, S. I. Drevnegrecheskii iazyk. Moscow, 1948.
Beletskii, A. A. Printsipy etimologicheskikh issledovanii (na matériale grecheskogo iazyka). Kiev, 1950.
Chantraine, P. Istoricheskaia morfologiia grecheskogo iazyka. Moscow, 1953. (Translated from French.)
Ioannidis, A. A. Novogrechesko-russkii slovar’ pod redaktsii A. A. Beletskogo, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1961.
Thumb, A. Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte, vols. 1–2. Heidelberg, 1932–59.
Meillet, A. Aperçu d’une histoire de la langue grecque. Paris, 1937.
Buck, C. D. The Greek Dialects. Chicago, 1955.
Thumb, A. Handbuch der neugriechischen Volkssprache, 2nd ed. Strassburg, 1910.

O. S. SHIROKOV

greek

1. To display text as abstract dots and linesin order to give a preview of layout without actually beinglegible. This is faster than drawing the characters correctlywhich may require scaling or other transformations. Greekingis particularly useful when displaying a reduced image of adocument where the text would be too small to be legible onthe display anyway.

A related technique is lorem ipsum.

greek

In desktop publishing, to display text in a representative form in which the actual letters are not discernible, because the screen resolution isn't high enough to display them properly. The software lets you set which font sizes should be greeked.

The term comes from typography and graphics design, in which Greek or Latin words are used in a mockup. They hold the position and represent the real text that will be forthcoming. Foreign symbols are used so that the text can be quickly identified as fake.

Greeking

These pages are greeked in this print preview mode, because there is not enough resolution on screen to display them correctly.

Greek

Greek

Greek

Greek

Greek

greek

Greek

the Greek calends

beware of Greeks bearing gifts

(it's) (all) Greek to me

(it's all) Greek to (one)

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Greek to (someone)

Greek to me, it's

be all Greek to someone

be Greek to someone

it's all Greek to me

beware (or fear) the Greeks bearing gifts

it’s all ˈGreek to me

Greek to someone

Greeks bearing gifts, beware of/like

Greek to me, it's/that's (all)

Greek to me

greek

Greek

Greek

REFERENCES

greek

greek

Greek

Synonyms for Greek

adj Hellenic

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noun Hellene

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Synonyms for Greek

noun the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European family of languages

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noun a native or inhabitant of Greece

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adj of or relating to or characteristic of Greece or the Greeks or the Greek language

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