Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Cynic
/ˈsɪnɪk/noun
Someone who assumes people act only out of self-interest.
The Greek roots
κύων
kýōn
dog
Literally: “dog-like”
Follow a root:κύων3 words
The story of the word
Diogenes slept in a storage jar, begged, and did in the marketplace whatever a dog would do there, and Athens called him the Dog. The school kept the insult as a name. Its point was shamelessness rather than suspicion: nature has no modesty, so neither should a philosopher. A competing ancient account traces the name to the Cynosarges gymnasium where Antisthenes taught. The modern sense, sneering distrust of motives, is an English drift of the seventeenth century with no philosophy in it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cynosurecynicalcynicismcynophobia
In a sentence
Twenty years in procurement had turned him into a cynic about deadlines.