Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Stratagem
/ˈstrætədʒəm/noun
A trick or scheme designed to outwit an opponent.
The Greek roots
στρατός
stratós
army, encamped host
ἄγειν
ágein
to lead
Literally: “an army-leader's deed”
The story of the word
A στρατηγός is an army-leader, and στρατήγημα is the clever thing he does. Athens elected ten of them a year and the post carried real political power, which is how Pericles ran the city for two decades. English took the trick sense from Latin in the fifteenth century and did not acquire strategy, from the same στρατηγία, until three hundred years later, so the ruse arrived long before the discipline.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
strategystrategicdemagoguepedagogue
In a sentence
Their stratagem was to lose the first vote deliberately and win the second.
It was a stratagem so obvious that nobody thought to check for it.