Everyday LifeGreek → English
Pithos
/ˈpɪθɒs/noun
A very large ceramic jar, often taller than a person, used in the ancient Aegean to store oil, wine or grain.
The Greek roots
πίθος
píthos
large storage jar
Literally: “storage jar”
Follow a root:πίθος1 word
The story of the word
Knossos still has rows of them sunk into the floor, some holding over a thousand litres. Two famous stories are set in one: Diogenes the Cynic lived in a pithos, not the barrel of later illustration, and Pandora opened a pithos rather than a box. The box came from Erasmus, who rendered the Greek as pyxis when he retold the myth in Latin.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
pithoi
In a sentence
The magazine at the palace held forty pithoi, each set into the floor.
A single pithos sherd told the excavators what the room was for.