Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Anabasis
/əˈnæbəsɪs/noun
A military expedition from the coast into the interior of a country.
The Greek roots
ἀνά
aná
up, upward
βαίνειν
baínein
to go, walk
Literally: “a going up”
The story of the word
To a Greek standing on a beach, inland was up, so an ἀνάβασις is the march away from the sea and a κατάβασις the way back down. Xenophon fixed the word for every later reader with his account of ten thousand Greek mercenaries stranded in Persia after Cyrus was killed at Cunaxa in 401 BC. Most of that book is in fact the retreat, so the title names the smaller half of the story.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
basisacrobatdiabeteskatabatic
In a sentence
The regiment's anabasis took it eight hundred miles from the nearest port.
He described his slow climb through the ministry as a bureaucratic anabasis.