Art & MusicGreek → English
Pharos
/ˈfɛərɒs/noun
A lighthouse or beacon tower, after the great tower of Alexandria.
The Greek roots
Φάρος
Pháros
Pharos, island off Alexandria
Literally: “the island of Pharos”
Follow a root:Φάρος1 word
The story of the word
A place name that ate a whole category. The tower went up on the little island of Pharos under Ptolemy II around 280 BC, was built by Sostratus of Cnidus, stood for over 1,500 years and went down in a series of earthquakes; the Mamluks used the rubble for a fort. Because it was the lighthouse everyone had heard of, its name became the ordinary word for lighthouse in the Romance languages, French phare, Spanish and Italian faro, and English kept it as a literary term.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
A pharos burned on the headland to bring the grain ships in.