Myth & LegendGreek → English
Orpheus
/ˈɔːrfiəs/proper noun
The legendary Thracian musician who went down to the underworld to bring back his wife and lost her by looking back.
The Greek roots
Ὀρφεύς
Orpheús
Orpheus, the singer
Literally: “uncertain, perhaps the bereft one”
Follow a root:Ὀρφεύς3 words
The story of the word
Orpheus sang well enough that stones were said to follow him, and his own name has no agreed origin; the usual guesses link it to ὀρφανός, bereft, or give up and call it pre-Greek. His larger legacy is Orphism, a body of poems and rites promising initiates a better afterlife. Thin gold tablets buried with the dead carry the instructions, down to which spring to avoid and what to say to the guards.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
OrphicOrphismorphan
In a sentence
Every version of the Orpheus story turns on the same second of doubt.