Myth & LegendGreek → English
Stentorian
/stɛnˈtɔriən/adjective
Very loud and carrying, said of a voice.
The Greek roots
Στέντωρ
Sténtōr
Stentor, Greek herald
Literally: “like Stentor”
Follow a root:Στέντωρ1 word
The story of the word
Stentor gets one mention in the whole Iliad. In book five Hera takes his shape to shout at the Greeks, and Homer says his bronze voice was as loud as fifty men together. He never appears again and does nothing else. The adjective has comfortably outlived the character, which is a decent return on four lines of poetry.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
stentor
In a sentence
A stentorian voice from the back of the hall told the speaker to use the microphone anyway.
He gave stentorian orders that nobody could actually make out.