Myth & LegendGreek → English
Trojan
/ˈtroʊdʒən/noun
Someone or something from ancient Troy, and by extension a program that hides destructive code inside apparently harmless software.
The Greek roots
Τροία
Troía
Troy
Literally: “of Troy”
Follow a root:Τροία1 word
The story of the word
The besieged city was Τροία, also Ἴλιον, and Latin turned its people into Troiani. English had the adjective by the fourteenth century, hollow horse included. That horse now names malware far more often than woodwork. 'Work like a Trojan' points somewhere else entirely: not at the trick that won the war but at the stubborn endurance Homer gives the men who lost it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
The attachment carried a Trojan that sat quietly for eleven days before doing anything.