Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Thalassocracy
/ˌθæləˈsɒkrəsi/noun
A state whose power rests on control of the sea rather than on territory.
The Greek roots
θάλασσα
thálassa
sea
κράτος
krátos
power, rule
Literally: “sea power”
The story of the word
Thucydides opens his history by claiming Minos was the first man to hold a navy and clear the sea of pirates, and archaeology borrowed that sentence as the Minoan thalassocracy, a phrase now used more cautiously than it was in 1900. English took the word in the nineteenth century for Athens after 478 BC, for Venice, and eventually for Britain. Θάλασσα has no Indo-European relatives worth the name and is probably a word the Greeks found already in use when they arrived.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
thalassemiademocracyaristocracybureaucracy
In a sentence
Their empire was a thalassocracy: a string of harbours and no interior worth defending.
A thalassocracy lives or dies by its dockyards.