Faith & RitualGreek → English
Prophet
/ˈprɒfɪt/noun
A person who claims to speak for God, or one who foretells what is coming.
The Greek roots
πρό
pró
forth, before
φημί
phēmí
to speak, declare
Literally: “one who speaks forth”
The story of the word
The πρό here is forth rather than beforehand. At Delphi the προφήτης was the official who turned the Pythia's ravings into intelligible speech, an interpreter rather than a fortune-teller. The Septuagint used the word for Hebrew nabi, and the future-telling sense hardened from there. It explains why the biblical prophets spend far more time denouncing the present than predicting the future.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 12th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
prophecyblasphemyeuphemismaphasia
In a sentence
He was treated as a prophet for about eighteen months.
The prophet in the story is nobody's favourite guest.