Earth & SkyGreek → English
Aeolian
/iːˈoʊliən/adjective
Produced or carried by the wind.
The Greek roots
Αἴολος
Aíolos
Aeolus, keeper of the winds
Literally: “of Aeolus, of the wind”
Follow a root:Αἴολος1 word
The story of the word
Aeolus kept the winds in a bag and handed it to Odysseus, whose crew opened it within sight of Ithaca. Geologists took his name for anything the wind moves: dune sand, loess, ash. The Greek adjective αἰόλος, shifting or quick-moving, may lie behind the god's own name, and a different Aeolus, a son of Hellen, gives the Aeolian mode and the Aeolic dialect.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
Aeolicaeolotropy
In a sentence
The plateau is buried under twenty metres of aeolian silt.