Ajax
/ˈeɪdʒæks/proper noun
The Greek warrior of the Trojan war, second only to Achilles in strength.
The Greek roots
Literally: “Ajax, punned in Greek on the cry aiai”
The story of the word
Sophocles has him pun on his own name as he dies, hearing αἰαῖ, the cry of grief, inside Αἴας; the real derivation is unsettled, and the ancients were guessing as much as we are. Homer gives the name to two men, the Telamonian Ajax who holds the Greek line at the ships behind a shield like a tower, and the lesser Ajax son of Oileus. After Achilles dies, the greater Ajax loses the contest for his armour to Odysseus, goes mad, and slaughters a flock of sheep in the belief that they are the Greek commanders. The scouring powder was named for his strength, some three thousand years later.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
In a sentence
Ajax never gets a god to help him, which is half of what makes him interesting.
The two Ajaxes are easy to confuse until one of them commits the sacrilege.