Everyday LifeGreek → English
Timon
/ˈtaɪmən/noun
A Greek male name, best known from Timon of Athens, the archetypal hater of mankind.
The Greek roots
τιμή
timḗ
honour, worth, price
Literally: “honoured one”
Follow a root:τιμή3 words
The story of the word
Τίμων is built on τιμή, honour, which is what the famous Timon spent and then lost. Athenians told of a rich man ruined, deserted by the friends he had fed, who withdrew to loathe everybody: Aristophanes jokes about him, Plutarch reports him, Lucian wrote him a dialogue, and Shakespeare made the play. A second Timon, of Phlius, wrote verse satires mocking every philosopher he could name and spared only his own teacher.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
Timothytimocracy
In a sentence
He has gone full Timon since the divorce.
Timon of Athens is staged less often than any other Shakespeare tragedy.