Words & WritingGreek → English
Paraphrase
/ˈpærəfreɪz/noun
A restatement of something in different words, usually to make it clearer.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside, alongside
φράσις
phrásis
speech, manner of speaking
Literally: “a saying alongside”
The story of the word
To paraphrase is to say the thing beside the original, which is exactly what the Greek pieces mean. Renaissance schoolboys learned by paraphrasing Latin authors line by line, and Erasmus's Paraphrases of the New Testament were ordered into every English parish church in 1547. The line between paraphrase and translation was never clean, and the line between paraphrase and plagiarism is not clean now.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
periphrasisphrasephraseologymetaphrase
In a sentence
Give me a paraphrase of the clause in language a tenant could follow.
What he called a summary was really a paraphrase with the awkward parts left out.