Myth & LegendGreek → English
Nepenthe
/nɪˈpɛnθi/noun
A drug or drink that makes sorrow disappear.
The Greek roots
νη-
nē-
not, without
πένθος
pénthos
grief, mourning
Literally: “no-grief”
The story of the word
It appears once in Homer, in the fourth book of the Odyssey, where Helen slips it into the wine so that a table full of men can stop weeping about Troy; the poet says she got it in Egypt. Ancient readers argued about what it actually was and opium is the usual guess, though nothing settles it. Poe borrowed the word for The Raven, which is how most English speakers have met it since.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
In a sentence
He talked about the bar as if it served nepenthe rather than lager.