Myth & LegendGreek → English
Cyclops
/ˈsaɪklɒps/noun
A one-eyed giant of Greek myth.
The Greek roots
κύκλος
kýklos
circle, wheel
ὤψ
ṓps
eye, face
Literally: “round-eye”
The story of the word
Round-eye is the whole description, and the single eye is the whole character. Hesiod's Cyclopes are smiths who forge Zeus's thunderbolts; Homer's Polyphemus is a shepherd who eats his guests until Odysseus blinds him with a sharpened stake. The Greeks called the boulder walls at Mycenae and Tiryns Cyclopean because no ordinary man could have lifted the stones, so they assumed giants had. The English plural is Cyclopes, three syllables.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cyclebicycleencyclopediamyopia
In a sentence
The lighthouse beam swung round like the eye of a Cyclops.