Words & WritingGreek → English
Gloss
/ɡlɔːs/noun
A short explanation of a difficult word, written in a margin or between the lines.
The Greek roots
γλῶσσα
glôssa
tongue; obscure word
Literally: “a word needing explanation”
Follow a root:γλῶσσα3 words
The story of the word
In Greek grammar a γλῶσσα was not just a tongue but a word that needed explaining: archaic, dialect or foreign. The note explaining it took the same name, and a book's worth of them makes a glossary. Mediaeval jurists glossed Roman law so heavily that the marginal notes became legal authorities themselves. The other English gloss, the shine on a surface, is an unrelated word of Germanic origin.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
glossarypolyglotglottalisogloss
In a sentence
A ninth-century monk left a gloss over the hard word, and it is the only record of it we have.