Faith & RitualGreek → English
Hecatomb
/ˈhɛkətuːm/noun
A great public sacrifice, and by extension any slaughter on an enormous scale.
The Greek roots
ἑκατόν
hekatón
hundred
βοῦς
boûs
ox
Literally: “hundred oxen”
The story of the word
Homer uses it loosely: a hecatomb in the Iliad might be twelve animals, and need not be cattle at all. An Athenian month, Hekatombaion, was named for the sacrifice that opened the year. The English sense drifted from ritual offering to sheer body count, so a modern writer calling a battle a hecatomb has kept the hundreds and dropped the altar.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
hectarehectometrebucolicbulimia
In a sentence
The dispatches described the ridge as a hecatomb, and for once the word was not rhetorical.