Sport & ContestGreek → English
Ultramarathon
/ˌʌltrəˈmærəθɑn/noun
A footrace longer than the standard marathon distance.
The Greek roots
Μαραθών
Marathṓn
Marathon, fennel place
Literally: “beyond the fennel field”
Follow a root:Μαραθών2 words
The story of the word
The Greek half of the word is a fennel field. Μαραθών, the Attic deme where the Persian fleet landed in 490 BC, takes its name from μάραθον, fennel, which still grows on the plain. The race distance of 42.195 km is not ancient at all but was fixed at the 1908 London Games, and anything past it is an ultramarathon, a Latin prefix bolted onto a Greek place name.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
marathonMarathonian
In a sentence
Her first ultramarathon was 50 miles across the moors in horizontal rain.
Ultramarathon runners talk about eating the way cyclists talk about gearing.