Words & WritingGreek → English
Symbol
/ˈsɪmbəl/noun
A mark, object or sign that stands for something else.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
together
βάλλω
bállō
to throw, put
Literally: “thrown together”
The story of the word
A σύμβολον was a physical thing: a coin or a bone snapped in two, one half kept by each party to an agreement, matched years later to prove the bearer was who he said. The proof lay in the two halves thrown together. Church Greek then used the word for the creed, the token by which Christians recognised one another, and that is the sense English borrowed first in the 15th century; the general meaning of sign followed in the 1590s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
hyperboleparableproblememblemmetabolism
In a sentence
The symbol on the dashboard turned out to mean the washer fluid was low.
Doves as a symbol of peace long predate the modern peace movement.