Everyday LifeGreek → English
Glamour
/ˈɡlæmər/noun
An attractive and exciting quality that makes someone or something seem special.
The Greek roots
γράμμα
grámma
letter, thing written
Literally: “letters, learning”
Follow a root:γράμμα17 words
The story of the word
This is "grammar" with a Scottish accent. In the Middle Ages grammatica meant book-learning of every kind, and to unlettered neighbours the man who read books was the man who read spells, so Scots glamer came to mean an enchantment cast on the eyesight. Walter Scott used it in verse in 1805 and English took it south, where it lost the magic and kept the illusion. Hollywood supplied the rest.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → Scots → English
- First recorded
- 1720s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
grammardiagramprogramepigramgramophone
In a sentence
The job had none of the glamour the brochure implied, mostly spreadsheets and airports.