Myth & LegendGreek → English
Myth
/mɪθ/noun
A traditional story about gods, heroes or origins, or a belief widely held and untrue.
The Greek roots
μῦθος
mŷthos
word, speech, story
Literally: “a thing spoken”
Follow a root:μῦθος4 words
The story of the word
In Homer μῦθος is simply a speech, something said out loud, with no hint of falsehood in it. Plato set μῦθος against λόγος, story against reasoned account, and the demotion began there. English took the word late, around 1830, mostly through German scholarship on ancient religion. The flat dismissal, "that's a myth", is younger still.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1830
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
mythologymythicaldemythologize
In a sentence
The myth of the sleeping king turns up in a dozen countries.
It is a myth that goldfish forget everything in seconds.