Words & WritingGreek → English
Story
/ˈstɔri/noun
An account of events, true or invented.
The Greek roots
ἱστορία
historía
inquiry, account
Literally: “learning by asking”
Follow a root:ἱστορία2 words
The story of the word
Story and history are the same Greek word arriving twice by different roads. Old French estoire, clipped in Anglo-French to estorie, gave English story around 1200; the fuller Latin historia was borrowed separately, later, for the record of what actually happened. Behind both sits ἵστωρ, a person who knows because he has seen, which is why Herodotus called his book an inquiry.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1200
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
historyhistorianhistoricprehistoric
In a sentence
Tell them the story about the ferry and the goat.
Every family has one story that gets retold until nobody can check it.