Earth & SkyGreek → English
Gulf
/ɡʌlf/noun
A deep inlet of the sea, or a wide separation between two positions.
The Greek roots
κόλπος
kólpos
bosom, fold, bay
Literally: “the bosom of the sea”
Follow a root:κόλπος1 word
The story of the word
Κόλπος first meant the fold of a garment across the chest, then the chest itself, then any hollow curve, which is how a coastline that bends inward came to be a bosom of sea. Late Latin took it as colpus, Italian made golfo, Old French golfe, and English had gulf by the late fourteenth century. The abstract sense, a gulf between two people, arrived within a couple of centuries and now outnumbers the geographical one in ordinary speech.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Italian → Old French → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
engulfcolposcopy
In a sentence
A gulf had opened between what the report said and what anyone did about it.