Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Galleon
/ˈɡæliən/noun
A large multi-decked sailing ship used by European powers from the sixteenth century for war and treasure.
The Greek roots
γαλέα
galéa
galley, long warship
Literally: “big galley”
Follow a root:γαλέα2 words
The story of the word
The line runs back through Spanish galeón and Medieval Latin galea to Byzantine Greek γαλέα, a galley, though where the Greek got that is disputed; γαλέος, a shark, and γαλέη, a weasel, have both been argued for the long narrow shape. The ship itself was a redesign, not a size upgrade: lower forecastle, longer hull, built to carry heavy guns across an ocean without rolling them into the sea. Galley, galliot and galleass are its siblings.
- How it travelled
- Byzantine Greek → Medieval Latin → Spanish → English
- First recorded
- 1520s
Same family
galleygalliotgalleass
In a sentence
The wreck was a galleon carrying silver from Peru.