Charon
/ˈkɛərɒn/proper noun
The ferryman who carries the dead across the rivers of the underworld.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the fierce-eyed one”
The story of the word
The fare was an obol, placed in the mouth of the corpse, and Charon refused anyone left unburied, so the shades of the unburied waited on the bank for a hundred years. Aristophanes has him bawling for passengers like a boatman at Piraeus. The name is usually connected with χαροπός, a word for fierce or flashing eyes, which makes him the grim-glaring one. He never went away: in Greek folk song he becomes Χάρος, Death himself, wrestling young men on the threshing floor, and James Christy attached the old name to Pluto's largest moon in 1978.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
In a sentence
Someone had put a coin in the dead man's hand, a gesture older than anyone at the graveside knew.
The ferryman on the night crossing looked so grim the children called him Charon.