10 Greek Mythology Words You Use Every Day

Some of our best-known stories and best-loved authors are responsible for giving us hundreds of new additions to our vocabulary over the years. Shakespeare is popularly said to have coined hundreds of new words. Dickens too created and popularized some suitably Dickensian-sounding words. And if you’ve ever chortled, then you’ve inadvertently quoted Lewis Carroll.

But when it comes to words rooted in stories and literature, even the tales of the ancient world have helped to expand our vocabulary—including the 20 surprisingly everyday words listed here.

1. Atlas
2. Chaos
3. Echo
4. Erotic
5. Hectoring
6. Lethargic
7. Narcissism
8. Panic
9. Siren
10. Tantalize

Atlas

In Greek myth, Atlas was the son of the Titan god Iapetus and the brother of Prometheus. Different tales ascribe different fates and life stories to Atlas, but in perhaps the most famous, Atlas was one of the gods who fell afoul of Zeus and, as a result, he was punished to hold up the heavens for all eternity.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, books of maps began to be printed, often depicting Atlas supporting the Earth on his shoulders on the cover or frontispiece. This image—which may have first been used by the famous Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator—eventually led to his name becoming a byword for the books themselves.

Chaos

Greek writers and historians used the word chaos to describe both the vast emptiness of the universe before the world and everything in it came into being, and the deep abyss of Tartarus, the underworld. According to the Greek poet and mythmaker Hesiod, meanwhile, Chaos was a personification of primeval emptiness, from whom was birthed Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (night).

As stories like these continued to be told, the notion of Chaos shifted from a vast emptiness to a state of wild, unfocused disorder from which an ordered world was eventually born; it is this later interpretation of the word, first used by Ovid, that gave us the words chaos and chaotic as we use them today.

Echo

In the Metamorphoses stories by Ovid, Echo is described as a mountain nymph or oread who angers the goddess Hera, queen and wife of Zeus, by keeping her detained in conversation while her husband was busy on one of his many romantic escapades. As punishment, Hera deprives Echo of the ability to say anything other than mindlessly repeating whatever has just been said to her—giving us the word echo in the process.

In the story of Narcissus (more on which in a moment), Echo fell so hopelessly in love with the beautiful young man that when he ignored her attentions and eventually perished by the waterside, she too broken-heartedly pined away, until only her echoing voice remained.

Erotic

Eros was the Greek god of love and desire, said in some versions of his story to be the cherub-like son of the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. And while Aphrodite gave us the suitably loved-up word aphrodisiac, it was Eros who gave us the similarly themed word erotic.

Hectoring

Someone who hectors behaves in a bragging, swaggering, or intimidatingly arrogant way, while a person described as hectoring might go out of their way to harass or brashly intimidate others. The word derives from the name of Hector, the eldest son of King Priam of Troy in Homer’s Iliad—but in the story, he is shown to be a loyal son, companion, and fighter, not a blustering braggart.

The missing link between these two meanings, ultimately, is believed to be gangs of rowdy young men in 17th and 18th century London who labelled themselves as "Hectors." Yet despite apparently seeing themselves as gallant young models of masculinity, the Hectors came across to everyone else as little more than unpleasant and intimidating loudmouths.

Lethargic

The Lethe was one of five rivers said to flow in the Greek Underworld, according to many legendary tales. Its waters were said to cause oblivion or forgetfulness (which the Greek word lethe essentially means), and the spirits of the recently deceased were said to drink from the river to forget their past selves as they entered the afterlife.

Over time, this sense of forgetfulness and obliviousness shifted to come to mean listlessness and sluggishness, and ultimately the river’s name inspired words such as lethargy and lethargic.

Narcissism

Narcissus in Greek mythology was the beautiful son of the river god Cephissus, who became so enamoured of his own reflection in a mountain spring that he pined away on the water’s edge (eventually transforming into the flower that bears his name).

His fatal obsession with his own appearance later inspired the term narcissism to describe just that, which was first coined in the early 1800s before catching on further in the psychiatric literature of the early 1900s.

Panic

In Greek tradition, groundless feelings of panic were attributed to Pan, the horned, goat-like Greek god of the woods, pastures, shepherds, and fertility. As well as giving his name to the panpipes that he was so often depicted playing, Pan was said to be responsible for creating mysterious and apparently disembodied sounds in remote places that could unnerve anyone or anything who heard them.

So as well as causing herds of livestock and other animals to suddenly take fright and scatter, Pan could cause even the most steel-hearted of people to suddenly feel ill at ease in remote or isolated places, and begin to panic.

Siren

In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew encountered the monstrous Sirens—half-female enchantresses, whose beautiful singing would entice seafarers to sail their doom on the rocks around their island—on their journey home from Troy. The only way to sail by safely was to make oneself deaf to the Siren’s song, and so Odysseus had his crew stuff wax in their ears while he, driven by curiosity, had himself bound to his own mast so that he could hear their song with his own ears, yet be prevented from altering the course of his ship, or jumping overboard to swim toward them.

The word is still used of fatally tempting women today (while the expression "siren song" is used of any similarly enticing prospect), but it was in the early 1800s that the word also came to be used of a kind of musical instrument that operated a little like one of the pipes in a pipe organ to produce a solid tone. And when a similar device later began to be used as a warning sound on ships, the name subsequently jumped across to any such device that produces a loud, emergency-announcing tone.  

Tantalize

According to a tale in Homer’s Odyssey, Tantalus was an ancient king of Lydia, and a supposed son of Zeus, who was punished by the gods by being made to stand neck-deep in water, beneath the fruit-laden branches of a tree. Although eternally hungry and thirsty, every time Tantalus moved to take a drink from the pool or reached up to pick fruit from the boughs of the tree, they retreated from his grasp.

His name ultimately inspired a byword for tormenting "tantalizing" temptation—as well as a nickname for a locked liquor cabinet that displayed the drinks that only the owner of the key could remove.

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