Myth & LegendGreek → English
Titan
/ˈtaɪtən/noun
A person of enormous strength or standing in a field.
The Greek roots
Τιτάν
Titán
one of the elder gods
Literally: “a Titan”
Follow a root:Τιτάν4 words
The story of the word
The Titans were the generation of gods that Zeus overthrew, and poets also used Titan for Helios the sun, which is how Chaucer uses it in English. Martin Klaproth named titanium after them in 1795, following his own precedent of naming uranium for Uranus and deliberately choosing a name that said nothing about the metal's properties. The adjective titanic is recorded from 1709, two centuries before a ship borrowed it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- late 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
titanictitaniumTitaness
In a sentence
He was a titan of the shipping business and knew every captain by name.
The Titans lost, and losing is most of what we remember about them.