Words & WritingGreek → English
Allegory
/ˈæləɡɔːri/noun
A story whose characters and events stand for a hidden second meaning.
The Greek roots
ἄλλος
állos
other
ἀγορεύειν
agoreúein
to speak in public
Literally: “speaking otherwise”
The story of the word
The second half is the ἀγορά, the marketplace where speaking was done in public, so ἀλληγορία is saying one thing out loud and meaning another. Greek critics developed the technique to rescue Homer: if the gods behave disgracefully in the poems, read those episodes as physics or ethics in costume. The word reached English in the late fourteenth century, in time for Langland and the whole medieval habit of walking virtues onto the page.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
categoryagorapanegyric
In a sentence
Students always read the novel as an allegory of the war, and the author always denied it.