ESL Blogs

When I wrote my blog "Did You Know? - It's The Greek's Flavour", I found out that there were many more English words originated from the Greek mythology. Therefore, I want to share a few more of those words.

Did You Know? :-

1. Morphine

The word morphine, the drug that make someone in a dream-like state, was originated from Morpheus. Morpheus was the Greek God of Dreams. He had the ability to take human form and appear in people's dreams as suggested by the word 'morphe'. 

The Dream World of Morpheus was where his family lived. It was said that the cave where Morpheus lived was full of poppy seeds. In his Dream World, the River of Forgetfulness and River of Oblivion were found. 

2. Nemesis

The meaning of Nemesis in modern time is the inescapable agent of someone's or something's downfall. In the Greek mythology, Nemesis was the Greek God that took revenge against those who showed arrogance before the other Gods. She also responsible in maintaining the equilibrium of human affairs. She had to ensure that happiness was not too frequent or excessive. If human seemed to be too fortunate, she will bring losses and suffering.

Thus, she was regarded as the avenging or punishing divinity. Nemesis was feared because she was the messenger of Justice, Retribution or Divine Vengeance. She dislike the absence of moderation, thus very zealous in trying to re-establishing order and proportion through punishment. 

3. Tantalising

The word tantalising means arousing desire or expectation for something unattainable or mockingly out of reach. The word "tantalise" originated from the story of Tantalus. Tantalus was a half-god and half-nymph. He was favoured by the Gods and thus invited to dine with Zeus at Olympus. He stole ambrosia and nectar as well other secrets of the Gods and brought them to the mortals.

He also sacrificed his son Pelop to the Gods, but the Gods knew about it and rebuilt back his son. As punishment, he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he was thirsty and reach down to drink, the water would recede. The same when he was hungry. Whenever he reached up to the tree branches for the fruits, the branches would rise up and out of his reach. Therefore, Tantalus would spent the rest of eternity being tantalised by water and food he could never have. 

It's really fascinating to learn the origin of these words and at the same time learning a little bit about all those Greek mythologies. It seems like all these Greek mythologies really left strong mark in modern world. 

My other Did You Know? series:-

1. Did You Know?;  2. Continuation;  3. Another Continuation;  4. Not Another Continuation!; 5. Gosh! Will It Never Ends?;  6. Oh No! Not Another One!;  7. Here Comes Another One;  8. Another One?;  9. One, Two, Eighty Six?; 10. Punishment? OMG!; 11. Is This A Swan Song?;  12 John Has It All?; 13. It's All In The Myth;  14. This Is Random;  15. It's A Dog's World;  16.  It's Also A Cat's World;  17. Is It A Mouse World Too?;  18. Dutch Flavour;  19. It's The Greek Flavour