Everyday LifeGreek → English
Dais
/ˈdeɪɪs/noun
A low platform at one end of a room for a speaker or a head table.
The Greek roots
δίσκος
dískos
quoit, thrown disc
Literally: “a thing thrown”
Follow a root:δίσκος9 words
The story of the word
Behind the platform there is a discus. δίσκος, the thrown quoit, came into Latin as discus, meaning a flat plate, and Old French turned it into deis, the high table, then the raised floor the table stood on. English has borrowed that one Latin word over and over with different results: disc, dish, desk, discus and discotheque are all the same object landing in different centuries.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
discdishdeskdiscusdiscotheque
In a sentence
She stepped up onto the dais and the room went quiet before she reached the microphone.