Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Stoic
/ˈstoʊɪk/adjective
Enduring hardship without complaint, or belonging to the Greek school founded by Zeno.
The Greek roots
στοά
stoá
porch, colonnade
Στωϊκός
Stōïkós
of the porch
Literally: “of the porch”
The story of the word
The school is named after a building. Zeno of Citium taught in the Στοὰ Ποικίλη, the Painted Porch on the north side of the Athenian agora, and his students became the men of the porch. Greek philosophy did this repeatedly: the Academy was named for a grove, the Lyceum for a temple precinct. English had stoic by the late 1300s, and the small-letter sense, bearing pain in silence, flattens a system that was mostly about judgment rather than endurance.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
Same family
stoastoicismEpicurean
In a sentence
He was stoic about the delay, which is more than could be said for the rest of the queue.