Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Phallus
/ˈfæləs/noun
The penis, especially as a symbol or as a carved and carried image.
The Greek roots
φαλλός
phallós
penis, ritual image
Literally: “penis”
Follow a root:φαλλός1 word
The story of the word
In Greek the word was less anatomical than processional. A φαλλός was the outsized carved emblem hoisted through the streets at festivals of Dionysus, and Aristotle traces comedy back to the φαλλικά, the songs sung while carrying it. Latin took the word intact, English borrowed it in the seventeenth century, and Freud added the adjective phallic to psychoanalysis in the early twentieth.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
phallicithyphallicphallocentric
In a sentence
The museum labels the terracotta phallus as a doorway charm against bad luck, not as an obscenity.