Everyday LifeGreek → English
Orgy
/ˈɔːrdʒi/noun
A wild party, especially one involving unrestrained drinking or sex.
The Greek roots
ὄργια
órgia
secret rites
Literally: “the rites”
Follow a root:ὄργια1 word
The story of the word
Τὰ ὄργια were secret rites, above all those of Dionysus and the mysteries at Eleusis, and you could not attend without initiation. Nothing in the Greek implies sex; the rites meant torchlight processions, dancing, and objects revealed at night to people sworn to silence. English took the plural through Latin orgia in the sixteenth century, kept the drink and the frenzy of the Dionysiac version, and dropped the religion entirely.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
orgiasticorganenergy
In a sentence
The book describes the mysteries soberly, not as the orgy later writers imagined.