Words & WritingGreek → English
Scholium
/ˈskoʊliəm/noun
An explanatory note written in the margin of an ancient text by a scholar or copyist.
The Greek roots
σχολή
skholḗ
leisure, learned discussion
Literally: “a little something from the lecture room”
Follow a root:σχολή3 words
The story of the word
σχολή meant free time first, then what free men did with it, then the place they did it, which is how leisure ended up as the word school. A σχόλιον is the small change of that activity, a remark jotted beside the line. The scholia crowding the margins of the tenth-century Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad preserve the work of Alexandrian critics whose own books are entirely lost.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
schoolscholarscholasticscholiast
In a sentence
A single scholium is the only evidence that the play ever had a second ending.