Faith & RitualGreek → English
Apocalypse
/əˈpɒkəlɪps/noun
A catastrophic end of the world, or a revelation of hidden things.
The Greek roots
ἀπό
apó
away, off
καλύπτειν
kalýptein
to cover, to veil
Literally: “an uncovering”
The story of the word
ἀποκάλυψις means taking the lid off, and the covering verb inside it also hides Calypso, the nymph who conceals Odysseus for seven years. The Book of Revelation opens with the word, and for centuries English used Apocalypse as that book's title and nothing else. The disaster sense came from the book's contents rather than its name: fire, plague, horsemen, an ending. Strictly, the word promises information, not destruction.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
Calypsoeucalyptusapocalyptic
In a sentence
Every generation is convinced it is living through the apocalypse.
The exhibition traced how painters imagined the apocalypse from Dürer onwards.