Words & WritingGreek → English
Parable
/ˈpærəbəl/noun
A short story told to carry a moral or spiritual point.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside
βάλλω
bállō
to throw
Literally: “a throwing beside”
The story of the word
The Greek noun means a comparison, one thing set beside another. Translators of the Hebrew Bible used it for mashal, a proverb or riddling saying, and the gospel writers kept it for the stories Jesus told, which is how a general word for analogy hardened into a literary genre. Apollonius of Perga had already taken the same word for the parabola, a curve that lies alongside a fixed line.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
parabolaparliamentparolepalaverhyperbole
In a sentence
He answered the complaint with a parable about a farmer and two gates.